Dominic Jones

Professor Henken

ENC 1101

7 September 2023

The Assignment is Complete

I write out of necessity.

I have never enjoyed writing. I have always preferred numbers to words; they are much

more personally validating. The writing I do is often very uninspiring and is completely with the

mentality of completing the assignment and moving on with my life.

I cannot recall a time in my academic career thus far when I strived to go above and

beyond on a writing assignment. Much of my academic writing has been five paragraph essays

analyzing something in a book I probably didn’t read. However, in my limited research paper

writings, I found those more tolerable and at times enjoyable.

My comments are highly fixated on academic writing, but obviously, there are multiple

other types of writing. Personal writing as an emotional outlet is something I do on occasion, but

it is far from profound or something I would share. The last type of writing I partake in is just

daily writing in text messages and emails. Again, nothing profound, and I see it as a daily facet

of life.

My writing process has never been anything inspiring. I vaguely remember writing the

first five paragraph essay in fourth grade and using an incredibly structured outline. This created
a formula I would essay for the next eight years of my life. Looking at it, it probably created

some very stale writing using the same formula for every paragraph. As my academic career

progressed, I started moving away from using an outline more so out of laziness and the fact that

the outline was engraved into my brain. It was faster to just write the essay out than to write out

an outline and then writing it into format after. Ideally there is major distinctions between the

outline, rough draft, and final copy but there very rarely was. Often my biggest difference

between my rough draft and my final draft was the file name.

The last high level English or writing class I took was advanced writing in 7th grade. The

requirement to take the class was to get advanced on the Pennsylvania standardized English test.

Essentially, I tested substantially higher than the average student in Pennsylvania. This created a

false sense of confidence in my writing. I struggled all year in that class, and it shattered the

confidence I had in my writing. My little motivation to become a better writer disappear right

there.

Naturally, I became a better writer as I gained more and more experience but the work

into becoming a better writer was the bare minimum. I continue to struggle with grammar and

general sentence structure. Resources like Grammarly have helped improve these skills but the

free version of those resources only goes so far.

Ultimately, I feel like I have the ability become a better writer. I just don’t care enough or

have the desire to put the work in to become one. If I woke up tomorrow and was magically the

best writer in the world, that would be cool, but I probably wouldn’t be writing a new book

anytime soon.