December 5, 2018

Dear Journal,

 

     The sun is starting to rise, I can hear the birds beginning to chirp and I got a good amount of sleep last night. Ate some eggs and toast with apple juice to start my day off. My English professor gave us our final assignment asking to write about our theory of writing. I’ve decided that the way you start your day or the setting you are in can be a theory of writing but there is more to it than that.

      You know, when I think about it, my theory of writing is pretty simple. It just lays on the fact if they like the topic or not. If a person is forced to write about a topic that he or she is not interested in, then they will most likely produce a paper with little to no effort. Now take that same person and put them with a topic they care deeply about and the quality of the paper will be the opposite of the first. Going through this semester, it’s clear that you always want to have reasons behind writing such as what audience you want to reach, what side are you taking on, what message are you sending or what tone do you want people to take this as? Most people writing on a topic they dislike will not take this into account but given something a person likes they will make sure to follow all these purposes of writing to increase the value of the paper.

     Let me think of other ways to explain it…. Oh yeah, if someone asks you to come to an event that you know you do not want to go to but have to because of the person who asked, most likely you will show less effort towards it. Arrive late, oversleep, forget to prepare clothes, etc. But let’s take that same person and if they were asked to come to a party or go on a trip with close friends they will show more effort towards it. Prepare clothes for it, wake up way earlier than needed, eat a good breakfast, show up on time, etc. Anyone can relate if they want to do something, then they will go forward in doing so and vice versa if they do not want to partake in whatever is going on.

      I still can’t forget how stressed I was coming into the class. I have never been a fan of English throughout my school career as the grades I received in these classes were always lower compared to other subjects. If the question, “What is your theory of writing?” was asked to me in the beginning of the semester, my answer would have been straightforward and simple. “I don’t have one.” Before, writing to me was to get it done as quickly as possible. Sit down for about an hour or two and type random information towards the topic until I reached the minimum word limit. I would always receive a grade in the 80s and move on as I expected this grade all the time.

     Let us go back to 10th grade when our English teacher made us pick a health problem out of a hat to write about. My topic that I received was, “Are Energy Drinks Safe to Drink?” During this time, I had never drunk an energy drink before which meant I had no way of providing any background information to the topic already separating me from having any interest. I was forced to create the whole essay using information off databases. In the end of this essay, I had 12 sources in 4 and a half pages mainly because I could not express my opinion anywhere in the essay. People could argue that the essay was supposed to be off of research and not your opinion but most sources were biased to say that energy drinks are bad for you leading to me being forced to agree with them. If I wanted to take the other side, I had no evidence to do so. Parts from the essay, such as the one below, had no counter claim because I was not able to chime in and the databases always agreed with each other stating energy drinks are bad period.

“Energy drinks usually mess you up if drinking too much during one period. Energy rushes through your body faster as you drink more but when the rush is over, you go through what people call a “crash” which can result with confusion, anxiety, light-headedness, fatigue, headaches and irritability.”

 

     Personally when I take a lot of caffeine in now, I never experience a crash and I believe other people could agree with me. If I had this opinion before writing this essay, I could provide a counter claim and show both sides to the argument instead of only providing one. Even that I included a paragraph of positive effects, based off my sources, I was not able to develop it any further as the article had counterclaims to each of the positive effects as the example below.

 

“There are a lot of ingredients in energy drinks that is not just caffeine and sugar that really gives a kick to everyone that drinks it. Some ingredients are good, some are bad and some are both (10 Common Energy Drink Ingredients.) For example Carnitine can be found in energy drinks such as NoS and is known for helping fat burn. Even that it has that positive effects in you, it can also be linked to stomachaches and/or seizures”

 

     Fast forward to now in college where everyone is given the option to choose what to write about throughout the entire year. The effort that I put in exceeds other works previously done in high school. I was able to talk about video games, a topic that I not only have a lot of knowledge and background information on but something I do almost on a daily basis. The 3 works I composed this semester about video games helped me to truly define my theory of writing. I found out that even in noisy settings or days where I have not felt my best, I would still be able to write a paper with great quality.

      Let us use an example this year where we had the choice to take our topic, mine being video games, and putting it into a genre such as a blog or a poem. I decided to take my topic and put it into a newspaper and a blog, the examples below coming from the newspaper.

 

“We decided to look deeper into it and talked to someone from the support team to see if they could find the amount of money he spent on in-game purchases. Within an hour, someone responds saying that he has spent a total of 1,110 dollars on the game. “I’m not even surprised to be honest. I expected it to even be double or even triple that number.” ”

“ “I was like everyone else. Just downloaded the game just so I had something to play on my free time” she says. “In a matter of no time, I find myself always trying to get money in order to get some packs like it was a drug or something.” She claimed to even look for a job at 16 because she wanted an income so she felt less bad about spending money on the game but that did not help. It only fed the addiction more.”

 

     As I believed my blog had great quality, it does not beat my unique newspaper. I say this because I did what students would not usually do in an introductory English class and interviewed other gamers that I were friends with. Look at those examples above. I would never see myself doing something like that in high school. After going through the 10 interviews, this is when I finally realized. “I don’t really hate English that much anymore.” If I really hated it why would I do all this work when I could have written a simple article. This is also when I believe my theory of writing fully came to me.

     The relationship between my theory of writing and creating knowledge shows there is not one. If you care about the subject you are writing about, there should be no time needed to create knowledge. It should flow out of your mind onto the paper like a waterfall. When I wrote the first 3 papers this year, I realized each time I wrote a full one faster than the one before. This is because I did not spend any time thinking but just typing what I already knew. Anyone can argue that this just sounds like a rip off of brainstorming which it kind of is because it uses some aspects of what brainstorming is but, it removes other parts. The ideas are not scrambled but are already connected and linked with each other so it already makes sense by the time I am typing it. This is what I mean by not having a relationship between my theory and creating knowledge. To me, creating knowledge takes time and more effort to dig thoughts and ideas out but what I do requires little to no effort.

     I’m glad I got to get all of this out of my mind. Maybe someone someday will find this journal entry to help inspire them to keep a journal as well because it is a great way to reflect on obstacles that you overcame or new things that you ended up learning. When I began writing in English 110 I felt lost at first, but now I realize that writing does not only affect me on paper but also out in the real world. I feel as if I was able to write freely in English all these years I would have had a greater experience in English classes. Who knows, maybe English could become my favorite subject.

 

A.C.