Revisiting My Writing Process

I will reflect on how my writing process and time management changed throughout the semester in this post.

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I will start by reflecting on my writing process. Before this class, I was a procrastinator and I was really good at it. To an extent, my time management skills are still in the procrastinator category but not my writing process. This class required a lot of pre-planning to our projects that I wouldn't normally do if left to my own devices. The required work was a mix of heavy planner, heavy reviser, and sequential composer. I am none of those things but there are some aspects that I will take moving forward.

I can say I'm going to make Coggles and outlines from now on, but I'd be lying. Honestly, the most important part of the planning phase for me is the annotated bibliography. My college is engineering, which will usually require evidence in writing, making the annotated bibliography the most important. I might make a quick outline if the piece I need to write is substantial just to organize evidence before writing. Revising was another huge part that worked out for me. We had peer reviews in high school but most students would go for the bare minimum, which didn't result in helpful peer reviews. This class had a much more thorough peer review process and it certainly helped make the final draft as best as it could be.

My time management skills improved from this class. My writing process and time management were one in the same before the class, meaning I had to fit schoolwork into my schedule the day before it was due rather than do what I can when I can. At the beginning of the semester, I was good at getting work done when I could but that phased out quickly. I ended up doing most if not all the weekly work on Saturday. So how did my time management skills improve? Saturday used to be a day I enjoyed, so all the fun things of the week piled up on that day. I learned that Saturday is a day to do work, so I dispensed my free time throughout the week. Homework in other classes never ended up on Saturday but took up the time during the week I had planned for English, making Saturday the perfect day for English. I prefer having free time throughout the week so I will keep this time management strategy moving forward.