My Top 5

     As this year progressed, and I was exposed to more and more writing styles and tasked to create writing pieces in different genres, I have learned quite a lot, like allowing myself to open up more and write about my life.  At the beginning of the year, we were tasked to write a college essay about ourselves and some event or aspect of our lives.  I have never been one to easily open up and tell my story, but using the college essay as an outlet gave me the perfect reason and opportunity to do so.  An due to the time spent on the project and the ideas we explored, I have come out a better personal writer and can bring that with me into the future.

    Another thing I learned was how to not follow a basic essay format and create writing pieces in a more unstructured format.  For almost the entirety of our year, we were taught how not to use generic writing formats in trade for more freely written ones that help ideas flow more coherently.  And while we weren't just set loose to write whatever and however, we were given more styles and formats to write in.  The article we read "My Five Paragraph Theme-Theme" was the first major focal point of this idea.  Learning this idea is great for my future because when I have to write many more essays, I won't be stuck with just the normal intro, 3 body paragraphs, and a conclusion format to write my pieces.

    One new idea that I learned that I never expected to was properly setting up and writing a blog.  Before this I have never even considered learning about how to create a blog, nonetheless, actually write blog posts.  However, I have surpassed that assumption and created a blog that gives readers a great idea of who I am, how I think, and how I write.  While I may not use this too much in my future, If I am ever compelled to create another blog for my own personal benefit, I have the perfect "training" and knowledge for it.

    Another new skill that I gained from this year was how to properly write an argumentative essay.  Previously, when I have written argumentative essays, they were somewhat bland and one-sided.  I was only really taught to explore my point of view and have a 2 or three-sentence acknowledgment of the other side.  However, this year taught me to blur the lines between yes/no and right/wrong.  This helped me explore more viewpoints on a certain topic take them into account when creating the full writing piece.  This will be a great skill to have in the future when writing more argumentative essays as I will be able to write a more enriching piece.

    One final idea that I learned this year was how to spot writing that only looks at a "single-story".  I am now able to identify how pieces of writing may be biased and/or unrepresentative of the truth because they only explore a single viewpoint.  This skill also helps me in my writing by exploring more ideas during my research and writing so I can incorporate fore truth to my pieces.  By researching multiple "stories," I create more enriching and truthful writing pieces that give readers a better and more full view of a topic.