Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Revisiting My Writing Process

The end of the semester is fast approaching, and this post is a bit reminiscent on how I have changed over the course of a few months. Particularly my writing process and time management skills.

Valentin, nicolas. "Seasonal reflection......". October 25, 2008 via flickr.
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Looking back at my "My Writing Process Post" I can see that very little has changed. I would still identify myself as a mixture between a "Heavy Reviser" and a "Sequential Composer". The biggest thing that has changed for my process, and in my opinion has screwed me up mentally, is my ability to create outlines and edit them. These blog posts with their specific constraints and orders have tampered with how my brain usually flows. It is hard to find the time to create an outline that I enjoy, or find information that would help me even more due to the copious amount of work we were given weekly. I found myself short on time and too stressed to put the necessary effort into these foundational parts of my writing process. I still lean on being a perfectionist, but if college has taught me anything it's that some classes don't have time for that crap. It drives me insane and I often am without my bearings.

Looking back on my "Calendar Reflection" post I find myself saddened. Shortly after school started, maybe a month in, I had to quit my job because the stress from the amount of classwork was impacting my health. For the past 3 months I have spent ~95% of any free time I have doing homework. Literally every time my mom comes into my room she asks if I'm still working on it, and has just gotten into the habit of assuming that I'm always doing it. The workload for this class exceeded anything I could have ever thought, and it is what has taken up most of my time. It is what caused me to have to leave my job and to never have any free time. D: I also knew from the beginning that I would never be able to practice two hours a day, and have elected to drop music for now. There are more important things to focus on at the moment and maybe when I have the time for it again I'll pick it back up. Finishing homework two weeks in advance was not a realistic goal for me because most of the teachers don't keep their assignments updated that far in advance. I was lucky to have work that was posted a week in advanced, so different from high school. I've also learned to spend less time beautifying things, although it drives me crazy because I want everything to be organized and succinct.

Hopefully in any future courses I take that involve writing I will be able to structure things on my own timeline. These weekly deadlines have really screwed over my thinking process, although they were helpful in other aspects. I am looking forward to being able to work at my own pace again, as I feel that makes me much more successful. I have also created a more reasonable schedule for next semester, so time management should not be an issue. Without music or engineering (Oh yeah I changed my major to Business because this course showed me that I really wouldn't like what I was going into) I will have a lot more free time. I plan on getting a job and finishing my class work early in the week since I won't have any classes on Friday's, and I'm done before 2 most other days. I find myself to be much more motivated when I can work on my own time schedule, especially being able to finish things ahead of schedule. This is very helpful in the field I have chosen to major in: accounting. As one who has spent years watching my mother in this occupation, I know that having strong organizational skills and being able to get work done ahead of schedule is something that employers love.

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