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.

This week’s Rose Scholars event was probably the most helpful session of the semester so far. As a STEM major, it is not often that I come across required writing courses, which leads me to sometimes struggle with the process of planning/developing writing pieces. As many other students who attended this seminar pointed out, the most difficult part of an essay for me is the introduction. It has the essential role of captivating your readers’ attention as well as clearly defining your thesis and topics to discuss. The body of an essay is usually the easiest portion for me, given that I just get to communicate all the information that I had gathered as well as analysis points in an organized manner. A piece of advice that the instructor provided during this session was to break down the most intimidating parts of an essay into smaller manageable pieces, in order to just focus on one task at a time. I actually used this recommendation in one of my recent essays and it allowed the overall writing process to flow much more smoothly. Another specific recommendation provided for essay introductions was to use the “three Ts trick,” in which you have to check for an effective title, a thesis statement that expresses the main claim, as well as a smooth transition into the body of the paragraph. I will definitely be using all the advice that I received in this session in my future writing endeavors, especially grad school applications in the upcoming future.

Attending last week’s writing workshop was very helpful. As someone who dreads writing school papers, I was glad that the session took time to break down the writing process and make it seem more approachable. Usually, I struggle the most with academic reports and knowing how to cut down on length to meet word limits, but the fellows, Zach and Seema, gave out great advice on how to tackle common struggles in the writing process.  

Another thing that I found interesting from what was mentioned was the idea that everyone works and writes differently. So, it important that we learn what works for us and play to our strengths. Personally, I’m a morning person, so I like getting all my work done early. However, I find that tackling a new paper during the early day makes me feel tired and unmotivated. So, I’m definitely going to take their advice and try working different hours to see if my writing flow is better suited during a different time. Overall, I’m glad I was able to attend the workshop and learn such practical information that can help me improve my writing!

Writing is something that I have always struggled with. Even on something as simple as a blog post for Rose scholars I over think things and find myself putting it off further and further. I have spent a lot of time working on my writing skills and I like to think that when I actually get around to sitting down and writing, I am capable of putting together a decent piece of writing to turn in. But boy, I don’t know why I just try to avoid writing like crazy. I find that going to these writing seminars and just soaking in the advice and talking to people who are writing does help me get into the mood to write though. In terms of actual advice from the seminar, I felt not a whole lot of new information came through, but that is not a problem with the seminar, and more an issue of the fact that the basic writing techniques are so effective and they are easy to lose sight of when writing. I found the explanation of the paper titles quite funny. It is something I have noticed in academic papers and is a style I found myself already doing just after learning through osmosis by reading so many papers.

At the Thursday Seminar: Back to Basics: How to Write more Effectively and Efficiently, something specific strongly resonated with me. Being in the ILR school, I see the title structure this seminar recommends quite often. Several of my books, including History of Capitalism: A Reader, utilize the same method in its title. While I understand that listing titles in the way described at the seminar is beneficial because it gives more information about the work’s contents, the structure is becoming overused in modern academic works. While allowing readers to get a sense of the work from its title is important, I recommend creating more enticing and unique titles for these works instead. Assuming there is an abstract or summary available, information about the work’s contents in short order is already available. Therefore, why not make the title a space to further interest and entice the prospective reader instead?

I just attended the seminar “Thursday Seminar: Back to Basics: How to Write more Effectively and Efficiently”.

I am a big fan of writing and I’m always looking to improve my writing techniques. I do not have a set method of writing, I just start. This zoom showed me that there is not one correct way to write or a formula that will work for everyone, but we can make our own personalized formula and add tips from other people’s methodologies. I gained many new insights on other people’s process and how they integrate it in their own personal pedagogies. It was nice to meet the hosts of the event and how they use writing in their work and their styles.

I loved how this was a mini crash course, that was independent of a class so it was very self motivated / directed.