WP4: The Role of Writing

I’ve always considered myself to be a pretty good writer. Especially as a child, I loved writing. I’ve found that it’s one way I cope with problems and express myself. The problem was that I had been taught to write in the same, traditional ways. Every single year of school felt like it was a repeat of the same strategies and methods. There would always be a prompt, guided set of questions, paragraph limit, and structure to the writing. At times, I could not write my exact thoughts or truth about a topic because I had to follow a set of regulations. This summer, I wrote the way I used to enjoy. Exploring a topic that meant something to me allowed me to discover more about myself and understand past experiences while learning to be a better writer.

This summer, I wrote about my parent’s divorce to see how I can connect knowledge and research to experience. My parent’s divorce was a disturbing part of my upbringing. It often was hard to unpack my true feelings. It was difficult to express myself to peers; I used writing to cope. My writing always makes a full circle back to my traumatic experiences. A good way to understand who I am is to understand these experiences. This summer, my writing was free from restrictions and allowed me to use my voice. This took me down a road where I learned more about my experience and who I am today.

In WP1, I got my first glimpse at how much deeper my experiences are rooted. The hidden, psychological factors behind all my feelings and the person I am today. The prompt structured my writing in a way where I understood the experience. Writing about my experiences as a method of unpacking a deeper thought for a larger audience was a skill I developed as a result. I started with a very basic idea: how does divorce affect a child? As the summer passed, this grew into something much more complex. I learned how to unpack a simple idea and conceptualize all aspects of it. Using the writing prompts, I addressed a specific thought and interpreted it in a variety of ways. Using basic, yet effective questions opened my mind to many aspects of divorce.

The research I conducted was my favorite part of the semester. In WP2, I released a set of questions as a survey inspired by my experience of my parent’s divorce. The number of people that had a similar experience was incredible to me. I never considered how a divorce impacts a child’s intimacy, relationships, and values. The survey heavily inspired my WP3, now allowing me to explore my new knowledge and develop a deeper understanding. I spent a lot of time reading published academic research from many professionals. I was able to comprehend this information better because it pertained to my life. It was cool to use my research and writing to learn about myself. My retention of the information from this course exceeds most other classes because it was about my life. I listen to myself talking to my cousins and friends about this topic and I’m almost surprised about the amount of information I’ve learned.

Writing helped me develop a voice. It allowed me to be creative and self-reflect. I wrote in my WP3 about how a child develops their identity from experiences. Writing about my thoughts was a form of my self-discovery. Without even realized, I found out more about myself. I expressed my interpretation of my experiences at the start with WP1. Now, at the end of the course, I see how I viewed my experiences have changed. I credit this to my developed research methods. This summer, I learned how to research the topics that interest me.

What? How? Why? Because.

These are so simple yet effective ways of unpacking a topic. Seeing the development of my topic and what it has evolved from such simple questions is impressive. I’m proud of the work I’ve done in uncovering some of the ways my experiences have shaped my life.

I found a purpose in writing about my interests. I felt as though my experiences were contributing to some sort of research. The projects lead me to write about facts and use my experiences as research to validate these facts. There were times when I could not find the research for a claim I wanted to write about. I learned how to properly use my experience as a way to back up a claim. Doing so helped me connect that fact to a piece of my life, helping me professionally express my thoughts. In a step-by-step process, I was able to piece together what makes me who I am today. The open nature of the assignments was a solution as it allowed me to use my knowledge as a source itself. My analysis skills developed as I learned how to use that as a resource for my writing. I considered why my parents divorced, why did I react the way I did, my relationship with them, my virtues today, and how I was affected.

I mentioned once in class that my writing this summer served as a form of therapy for me. Bringing validity to my thoughts, understanding the psychological connections, and using my writing and class times to discuss brought me some form of closure about my situation. What I find so cool about this class was that everyone learned something so unique. The beauty of the assignments this summer was that they were up for interpretation. Every student analyzed the projects differently, yet, they all met the criteria and made sense. This made it so every person was working on a part of themselves rather than just another class assignment. It was refreshing and I’m grateful for the opportunity to explore a part of life that made me who I am today.