Writing is not my favorite activity. It takes me a while to consolidate my ideas. Yes, I am a STEM major, but I think the issue is that I’m overly critical of my writing. I want everything to be said in a particular way. In my opinion, writing effectively means to answer the question as organized and as concisely as possible. Something that I want to start doing more that will help me write more effectively is drafting outlines for my papers. Majority of the time I spend on a paper is answering the question and figuring out what I want to write about. If I spend time in advance creating an outline, I would save so much time writing the actual paper.
Up until this seminar, I never spent much thought on titles for papers. For the most part, titles of my papers are the names of assignments. I realize now that having an engaged title in the beginning already gives the reader an idea of the paper, rather than looking to the thesis to find what the paper is about.
I can relate to you feeling overly critical of your writing skills. Writing is not one of my favorite things as well, every chance I get I try my best to get out of writing essays. Being a STEM major, I feel like my creativity is completely shot so I really despise creative writing essays. I wish I would have attended the workshop, so I could have improved my writing skills and gain some tips like you had.
I’m the same way! I think the first step to writing better is to enjoy writing, and that was something this event helped me with. It was nice to talk with an expert, and a few of my peers, on struggles we all share with writing when it’s not our forte.