Throughout my life, I always have been consumed by my own self-doubt. Almost as if I already lost the race before I could even get to the starting line. The constant bickering, which I think is by the people around me, only to discover it’s in my head. Writing is no different. There are times where I think, what if this isn’t good enough? I realized the solution had to start with my mentality, not my writing. Writing holds no boundaries and can be interpreted in many ways. Therefore, I like to depict my theory of writing as “free” and the only limit being as far my imagination can go.

When I first started the semester, my theory of writing was still unclear and all over the place. I had no clear strategy or where to even start. However, as I began to interreact with my own writing and explore my classmate’s writing, I started to advance closer to my ideal writing. I managed to learn much more about myself and my habits and became more aware.

Not only has my writing has progressed during this course but also my approach to an assignment. Instead of panicking as I did in the first assignment, the source-based essay, and not even reading the directions properly to being calm and managing my time while observing how I write in the inquiry-based essay. My mistake allowed me to grow as a writer. This brings me to my first learning outcome: the significance of exploring and analyzing, in reading and writing, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. Experience is key to everything, and the practice articles from Professor Pastore enabled me to enhance my skills in rhetorical analysis while also giving me the knowledge needed to do the same on future pieces.

I was able to use this outcome, especially in my composition in two genres. During the brainstorming phase, I explored genres such as blogs, social media posts, ted talks, magazines, posters, and poems to give a few examples. Due to my growth in writing, I was able to make the decision of choosing a Facebook post and a blog as my genre which fit very well with my topic, AI. I had to effectively persuade and inform my target audience on why progression towards AI is bad and how can create long-term effects despite having some nice benefits. I couldn’t have done this before because I did not have the necessary skills to make correct judgments or let alone even have the confidence to take the risk, I did with the blog genre. If you navigate to the inquiry-based essay and compare it to the two genre compositions, notable differences in the writings are night and day and I am proud of this achievement. My rhetoric analysis improved greatly, and this allowed me to progress.

On the topic of AI, it wasn’t easy finding a suitable topic and it took multiple brainstorming’s to find something that piqued my interest. It was even harder to form a proper research question. Therefore, the second learning outcome played a crucial part here which was developing strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing. When you have a basketball game or football game, you don’t just run in and start playing, you need a plan and need to analyze your opponents. The same thing for writing, thinking of ideas, and forming brainstorms can help better manage your ideas. I learned that breaking your thoughts into parts and intervals can help accelerate your ideas. This is what I did when I came up with AI since it interested me the most out of my list. Using the same process, I was able to come up with the research proposal “how will the advancement of artificial intelligence affect the employment rate and economy of different industries between the 21st-22nd century” for my inquiry-based essay. After reflecting on my inquiry-based essay after I completed it, it surprised me because I could have never come up with this complex question before the semester. A big factor was revising and peer editing. It is important to read your writing out loud and write in multiple sessions. It is also important getting advice from others because this allows you to catch mistakes your eyes could have missed. This goes both ways; you are editing a classmate can help them while giving you ideas on what to do in your own writing.

A big part of writing is to always to do research. The third learning outcome was to “locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias” (course description) was a skill that I’m glad I developed in this course. Not only did this learning outcome help me with this semester but I can also improvise this in the future. I felt I was able to accomplish this the best in my source-based essay. The information I was able to find was flawless and was also able to justify the author’s credibility. I used the CCNY database to find my sources and was able to find resources articles such as “Should Artificial Intelligence Be Regulated?” by Amitai Etzioni and “Artificial Intelligence: The Time Is Now” by L. Dilworth which ultimately helped me learn more about my topic for future assignments as well. Overall, I was able to offer an informative essay about AI that should provide some context when encountering my projects on my website.

Even though I improved in a lot of things, I also have a long way to go before I reach my “free” writing theory. For instance, in the last learning outcome, even though I was able to provide informative sources, due to me not rechecking the assignment, I only provided research papers and not journal articles. This hindered the accountability of my essay a lot as I did not provide a different point of view towards AI that journal articles tend to have which was quite silly of me. It would’ve been flawless if I included a couple of journal articles to back up what I was saying. I tend to occasionally repeat this same mistake which should not happen. In addition, another area where I have not progressed would be my bad habit of procrastination. This habit is detrimental to my success and just puts unnecessary pressure on me. However, professor Pastore’s advice allowed me to conquer this one step at a time by trying to do put a time limit on an assignment (using my phone) before its due, so my brain is wired to think that it’s due at a specific time when it’s not.

As I am reading this while I write, I am realizing that this is also part of my theory of writing. My entire experience of making mistakes and improving and everything I have mentioned. These are all strategies I developed and are ways I write. My entire writing process has changed when I progressed in this course and now towards the end, I certainly see a difference. The change started with how I think and although it was challenging at first, repetition allowed me to progress, and hope it does for you as well.