Four things that I took away that helped me become a better writer
Things that I learned in my English class.
Finding the right audience
Out of all the amazing things that Mr. Cummings taught us, I took away what I think is the most important topic of them all: writing to a specific audience. I struggled with finding the right audience to write to, which made some of my writings not as good as they should have been. When I used to write all through high school, I would just write without even thinking who I was writing for, and that was ultimately my downfall.
My teacher always told us to write to a specific audience, and I finally saw how effective it was. When you write to a specific audience, the people you are writing to tend to read your essays. Before I changed my major, I was writing to engineers and college students who wanted to pursue an engineering career, and some people in engineering read my stuff.
After doing many different activities to figure out what type of audience I was writing to, I chose college students trying to find a career in nursing. I made an AI chatbot that allowed college students who were interested in nursing to find the right career for them. It also gave them other suggestions about the job careers that they are interested in that they probably didn’t think about.
Find what interests you
Writing about a subject that you are not interested in is highly boring. I feel like I am repeating myself a hundred times until I am satisfied or hit the mark. If given the choice to write about something you love, do it.
Having creative freedom in whatever you do lets your mind imagine amazing things. When I write, I like to write about things that interest me, like cardiology, aerospace engineering, random things I am interested in that day, etc. I have an absolute blast writing about them.
Before I found that nursing interested me, I would write about random things in engineering, like classes that engineering students should take. However, I didn’t really have fun writing about that, so I felt like my writing was vague on everything. Nursing, in general, has always interested me, so being able to write about it makes me extremely excited.
Read other people’s essays or articles
I learned that by reading other people’s articles, you can take tips from them and add them to your writing. Writers can tell how much they have grown throughout their writing, from their ups and downs, and seeing how it affects their readers can help immensely. I enjoy reading people’s stories that make people feel a certain way.
During our Substack sprint, he told us to post two notes and find two articles we thought were extremely interesting per week. I enjoyed reading all the Substack articles about Cardiology and the different types of things that go on within the heart. I could go on forever about how interesting it was and describe absolutely everything but I’m not sure if any of yall are interested in that so I’ll let y’all look it up if yall want. However, looking at the different articles and how they use headings and research to prove their point helped me create better Substack Newsletters.
Use writing platforms
Throughout my second semester of college, I have been using Substack to write some of my Substack Newsletters, and it has been a big help with my writing. My classmates and others who looked at my Substack replied to some of the newsletters and gave feedback about what I should do differently. I take this feedback from my classmates and add it to my next micro essay or Substack Newsletter.
In class, we also used Creative Classroom, where we posted most of our micro-essays to be read by other classmates. Our teacher would give us time in class to read other people’s micro-essays and provide feedback on them. He also gave us time in class to work on these micro-essays or Substack posts to make sure we had a good handle on things. Creative classroom was easy to use and navigate, making things much more accessible.
I know there are many other writing platforms similar to Substack or Creative Classroom, but I haven’t tried them yet.
In conclusion…
I have enjoyed my class and will take everything I have learned this semester and take it on for the rest of my college career. I hope the rest of my classmates had as much fun and learned just as much as me. Have a great day!!