When I was young, I always thought writing was my specialty. I won awards from almost every school writing contest, and adults loved my poems. The first time I vaguely recognized I may not be talented in writing was when I was in 6th grade. I joined one Internet site where members uploaded their works and exchanged reviews. Those pieces were quite interesting and I enjoyed the club activities. And one day, I uploaded my own poem which I thought to be very well-written. But members’ reviews were not very amicable; one of them even said, “If this is a poem, I’m sure everybody could be a poet.” I immediately broke away from the club, blaming the rude comment. But as I entered the middle school and missed all awards on writings, I started to think maybe that member was right. I took out all of my pieces and read it. The conclusion was; my writing was out of topic, cliché-ish, ambiguous, wordy, and lacked unique opinion. Well, definitely, it was not something to be called talent.
I stopped writing after this realization. During next three years, I wrote few essays for TOEFL and school assignment, but never wrote voluntarily. Even after I was admitted in KMLA and required to write a lot of essays for Ms.Choi’s class, I detested writing and did it very inattentively. Essays were pretty rough; lack of organization, common ideas, compulsory examples, none of those looked intrigued nor special.
It was during the summer vacation that my perception toward writing has changed. I registered to philosophy course that discussed justice, sympathy, art, and other philosophical concepts. Those were completely new to me, but were so fascinating that I quickly fell in love with the course. When essay assignment was given, I was ready to swim in the pool of philosophy.
I skimmed the lecture note once, read essay question twice, scrutinized the lecture note again and grabbed the pen. First I summarized quoted pieces in the question, and related it to important concepts in the lecture note. Based on this abbreviation, I made a detailed outline, and wrote my first draft. As I typed the handwritten draft to my labtop, I amended major flaws including disorganized paragraphs or wordy sentences. And before I sent teacher the final version, minor grammar or thesaurus errors were revised, too.
Next week, course teacher called each student to give advices on writings. When my name was called, I stood up in anxiety. However, the teacher surprisingly appreciated me. He praised that my strength was “neatness” – the essay was less redundant, less ambiguous, and less wordy than other students. It was shock to me; these were, I thought, my weakest part. And now he was saying the very opposite.
So I learned that my vulnerable points could be altered into my fortes if I have enough time, background knowledge and passionate mind. Still there are many factors in my writing that should be improved; the most representative is conveying my unique viewpoint. The essays I wrote during vacation were close to expository than argumentative. That is, I may be talented in analysis, but not in arguing my opinion. I hope to improve this blind spot during this semester, thus conclusively reach my writing goal – writing clear (comprehensible) pieces that provide deep impressions and opportunities to think to all readers.
This is very well written, with a good introspective tone. Highly readable. And what strikes me is the difference in your attitude when you wrote the philosophy assignment. When we are told to write something in a certain way with a certain opinion (or none whatsoever), we tend to be less engaged (especially if we were never engaged in the first place). However, if we are genuinely interested in the subject and have a clear idea of what we want to say and how to say it (with some creative freedom), putting pen to paper is not a "task" and becomes even fun. I hope you get a chance to write freely like this during the semester, and the more enriched your views become the more you'll be able to express them effortlessly. Type fast and free is my advice. However, go back and re-read and edit a bit. I look forward to reading your Ken Robinson essay.
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