Camila Ibarra

9 June 2023

Katya Lopatko

Writing 2

New Perspectives

As I entered our classroom I wasn’t sure what to expect. All my life there was a strict

boundary between structure and writing freedom; the expectation of how things should be when

it came to writing. Being stuck in a loop of structure led to me having trouble with my

translations. Both of my writing projects had similar problems that revolved around my initial

perspective of writing. Most of the writing I did in the past years consisted of five-paragraph

essays that were mostly timed. When it came time to start my writing I would try so hard for my

essay to be good the first time around. As time went on I told myself that the first draft had to be

as perfect as possible. Yet when I got to this it made me realize that writing was more than what I

was taught. Two quotes come to mind as I write about my experience. “All good writers write

[shitty first drafts]. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts”

(Lamott, 21) and “I also think, though, that writing is made harder than it has to be when we try

to follow too many rules for writing ( Reid, 3). Unlike any other course I've taken Writing 2

taught me that the first draft is allowed to be filled with mistakes you can only grow from there.

For our first writing project, we were tasked to translate an academic article and

transform it so that our target audience would read it. I translated Gender Role Portrayal and the

Disney Princesses I chose to take this academic article and change it into something that children

could understand. I knew what audience I wanted to reach but didn't think about how
there was different type of storybooks. Some storybooks had more pictures than a word to starter

chapter books. I sat there with all my ideas, but nothing on the paper. Yet “ Knowing a genre [is]

about much more than simply knowing its form”(Dirk, 255). I needed to go beyond structure I

had to think about what really captured my audience. I kept feeling like I had ideas but wasnt

sure how to start. I kept thinking about the rules and when I would think I had something good I

kept questioning myself.

For my WP2 I chose four articles of my choice and needed to make a translation as the

audience followed a conversation between the sources. The theme for this project was

code-switching and my target audience was young adults who were bilingual. As I created my

translation I kept running into the same problem. As I was writing my first draft I noticed I was

trying to integrate all my prior knowledge into the translation yet again. This time around

allowed me to start my first draft; well… at least the outline to try to narrow down who my

audience was going to be since at first it was too general. At first, I was scared to ask for help but

as I reached out to my teacher she helped me realize that it was ok to ask questions. I was so used

to the high school format that every time I tried to be as detailed as possible since there was a lot

of information coming from the four articles. As I met with Katya we came to the conclusion that

the genre that I had picked was not the most efficient way to convey my message. When I started

putting my ideas on paper I realized that the message I had originally planned had completely

changed resulting in me changing two articles and my genre.

As I was doing revisions and edits for both my writing projects I learned to expand my

perspective on genre. It was the first time I had written this type of genre while trying to

integrate as much information from the article without overwhelming my audience. I think that
the writing freedom given to me allowed me to see writing from a different perspective to reach

my audience. One common thing that both my revision needed work on was my formatting. I

need to put myself in the shoes of the audience and see how the way I formatted it could be a bit

confusing. I need to make sure that the audience could tell the way the writing was flowing.

One big takeaway from this class is you have to start somewhere when writing. Even if

you haven't finalized your ideas you can at least have an outline of what you want to say. This

was one of the hardest things I had to adapt to. Most of the time I would want my first draft to be

my final one which lead to many spelling errors and unfinished thoughts. With these new

adaptations, I had to learn to be patient with myself because writing takes time. I couldn't expect

to get everything right the first time around. While taking this class found myself using some of

the techniques while writing a few other papers for my other classes. I started with an outline of

the paper and I started to write. The first draft was done and it would only improve from there.

Perspectives change every day. This class connected me to the words that I wrote on

paper. It turned words into a connection; A connection with the audience. I think I grew a great

amount in this class, but I do believe you can only grow with good guidance. My professor was

there when I had questions which allowed me to feel comfortable in class. In the beginning, I

also struggled with speaking up I thought that my opinion wouldn't add anything but as the class

progressed and I knew this was a place for improvement I was able to volunteer more. This was

seen a bit as I presented my Final Portfolio.

 Work Cited

Dirk, Kerry.” Navigating Genres ”Writing Spaces: Readings On Writing.Parlor Press, 2010, pg

249-262

Lamott, Anne, “Shitty First Drafts.”Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New

York: Pantheon,1994, pg 21-27

Reid, Shelly E., “Ten Ways To Think About Writing: Metaphoric Musing For College Writing

Student.”Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 2, 2011, pg 3-23