The 2022 fall semester brought many ups and downs especially in my FIQWS writing class. I was nervous attending the first day of classes, anticipating a challenging course but what I encountered I would’ve never expected. I was challenged as a writer with every assignment increasingly becoming more time consuming and difficult. 

The year started off strong with small, simple exercises that tested our basic writing skills. We practiced our description techniques by attempting to describe our very own bedrooms in great detail. Our descriptions were eventually broken down and shown to be flawed when read aloud and drawn exactly as written. We also practiced transitions and hooks to create attention grabbing writing pieces. Although this was humbling since I went into the class thinking these basic skills were easy and already perfected, it was great to know I had things to work on. 

These simple skills were put to the test in our first assignment, the narrative essay. The narrative essay was a personal story that involved death or loss that could represent a so-called “death”. In story writing a key part of it is creating a scenario, a place, a time and developed story which is easy for the reader to follow. My first attempt at this story was very wordy and over complicated which made it very difficult to read. I realized being descriptive does not always mean having the most words. I spent a lot of time cutting down on unnecessary details to strengthen the important aspects of my story and it created a great narrative.

We also learned to peer review and this has become a big part of my routine when writing. Peer reviews have helped me a lot, my classmates were blunt and straight forward which is what I needed to create my best work. Surrounding yourself with people who just agree does not help, but being honest as well as constructive can be the difference maker between great work and poor work. 

Along with writing comes reading. Understanding of literature as a whole is very important as it allows you as a writer to dive much deeper into your writing since you know what a good piece should read like. Annotating and breaking down literary elements was an important portion of the FIQWS class this fall and growing in this aspect has helped me tremendously.

The second assignment was the exploratory essay. We began with professor Riley Reid who taught us how to properly research and utilize our sources. Finding correct, scholarly sources was difficult but helped provide the best information and evidence for our papers. I chose to write about the death penalty. It was a challenging topic since I personally do agree with the death penalty but I had to provide an unbias argument with equal support for both sides. Although it was hard fighting for the opposing view, with the proper evidence it made it easy to just write the information and let the words flow.

The semester came to an end with one final paper that combined all our practices into one. The critical research analysis. This paper called for us to create a thesis on one of our readings from the section of class with Professor GD Peters. Then we had to research and provide arguments supporting our thesis and proving what we believe in.

The critical research analysis was difficult since I had to read the same story over and over trying to find more information. I rewrote my paragraphs over and over as well, trying my best to find what arguments worked best. In the end I feel that all my practice and skills came together to create a final piece I am very proud of.

The 2022 fall semester was a challenge full of late nights and constantly starting over. But in the end it taught discipline and made me a better writer.