The Formula of How to Get to the Moon

I had the typical dream of traveling to the moon in grade school, aspired to study mechanical engineering in high school, and am finally majoring in it in college. Frankly still, English and writing has never been my forte or major interest. I dreaded each course in high school and took the AP courses in hope of getting college credits in order to place out of future English courses. I luckily placed out of one, but still am required to take two. My first requirement is completed after these 11 weeks, as I have taken English 101 Composition and Rhetoric. I would definitely say my attitude towards writing has changed since taking a college-based writing course. Unlike high school, the writing assignments are not as rigid. As a student, I was granted more freedom to write about topics personal to me, rather than researching a novel. I had the freedom to, for instance, develop my own research topic that expanded over a wide range of topics under the broad umbrella of writing. I also had to write about times in which I was engaged and disengaged in writing. Again, this topic was more reflective and individualistic, allowing me to write about the history of my experiences with writing. Though writing is still not my favorite subject of interest, my attitude towards how college writing courses are structured is much more positive than how high school ones are.

I think that I find writing and English to be difficult courses for me to enjoy and comprehend because there is no true, correct answer. For math and science based courses, there is a formula, there are numbers and there lies an answer. However, with writing, there is rarely a true definition of what good writing is defined as. Every individual has different writing styles, faults and techniques. So, I argue the idea of “learning” how to write. Sure, you can learn in grade school proper spelling, grammar, punctuation and so on, but you can’t really learn your own style of writing. It is moreso something that you develop over the years as you write different types of essays, journals, etc. However I would definitely say that your teachers influence how you develop your own writing style. Still, it is very different to learn a skill such as writing versus learning a skill such as algebra. In algebra, there are formulas to memorize and steps to take in order to learn the material and solve for the correct answers. However, in writing, one teacher may grade a paper different from how another would. So, I would definitely say that you don’t necessarily learn how to write but you rather use your attitude to develop your skill of writing. Your attitude is directly correlated to your writing skill and style. It is your own attitude and opinion that makes your writing individualistic to you.