My earliest memories of writing are in third grade. My teacher had gone on maternity leave and we had a substitute for the rest of the year. She made us write our full name – Kayla Annette Midolo – in cursive on every line, front and back, on a wide ruled sheet of paper. Everyday. To be completely honest, I never write in cursive and when I sign my name, it looks awful, so I am not sure if this helped me personally. I do however now kinda blend my letters together when I write.
That same third grade teacher helped me write certain letters correctly such as my “d” and “i.” I would see the way my mom wrote “d” and my grandmother wrote “i” and I wanted to write like them. None of my teachers liked that very much. Besides writing letters, in third grade, my class ran a program called “we deliver.” This program taught us how to write and mail letters to other students in the school as well as teachers. Starting in fifth grade until eighth, we did IIM projects, which were essentially research projects. These projects helped me to find worthy research, take notes on it, cite my sources, and many other things.
I hate creating stories. For me it is hard to sit and write something not true. I also do not like when I am not given a prompt to write about. On the other hand, I enjoy getting a prompt to write about because I can narrow my choices down and then choose what to write about. I also find it easier to write about my past experiences and hopes for the future.
As a writer, I think I am significantly stronger than when I came to UNE. I enjoyed working with my peer mentor in ENG110 who really helped me to properly write introductions and conclusions, as they were not my strong suits. I think I am generally pretty good at grammar and punctuation, as well as proofreading others’ writing.
In terms of improving, I want to be able to proofread my own writing better and organize my thoughts more. Sometimes it is hard for me to separate topics as I feel when writing about a topic, many areas can blend together.
