My Style and What I Have Learned About It

            The readings for this cycle have really opened my eyes to the type of writer that I am. I was surprised to learn that most college students do not dig deep into writing on a topic, take a lot of shortcuts, or simply have no knowledge of how to correctly go about writing a paper. Based on what I have learned, part of the problem is what we have been taught in high school, but I feel that I have avoided a lot of that. I need to take the responsibility to look at these things and grow as a writer here and now. This is college writing.

            I feel that I am not caught up in the modern day way of student cheating. I have been brought up to know that taking any credit or help from someone or something and making it seem as if it were your own is wrong and unacceptable. I am aware of the Honor Code that JMU has and I feel that I always follow it. When it comes to writing, I always cite and sometimes over cite to be sure that I give credit where credit is due. Whenever I do not know how to properly cite, I ask questions and do not leave the information there without any credit. If there is anything that I feel that I could improve in this area, it would be to ask more questions as to the expectations of professors to further avoid academic dishonesty.

            When it comes to research papers, I do feel that I have a lot of work to do. I wouldn’t say that I fit Kleine’s example of students, but I do gather a lot of information and for the most part summarize but make sure to cite it all. I would like to work on having more thought in my research rather than all writing based on what others have thought. The thing about college is that professor want to see what is going through your mind, not necessarily be presented with a bunch of information that already exists. Grasping these ideas is so important to me because I plan to go into research as a career. My life will be filled with writing articles and grants and I need to be extremely good at communicating my thoughts and interests as well as what has already been done on my topic of study.

            To go along with this, I want to become a better writer overall. Sommers made it pretty clear to me that what students lack is frame and a passion for what they present their readers. I do feel that I am able to be compassionate towards my readers, but I need to think more of the frame rather than the thesis based method. I want people to be able to read my work and not only be impressed, but feel that I have enjoyed what I presented to them and can see my thought process start to finish. I am very glad that we were given these readings to think about. I feel that our class will be able to produce some great research papers now that we further understand our writing processes.