Writing Style

Writing for each class is different for me.  For English papers, I typically just start writing, no planning.  It’s probably not the best idea but it gets the job done.  When writing for English, I always jump around or add new ideas so frequently so I have found that creating an outline is not really helpful.  As for research, I took the easy way out in high school and googled all my sources because the library was such a hassle to get to.  Now since it’s on campus, I've been trying to be more academic and use books.  For other subjects, like history, I typically write out little sections outlining everything I know and then I free write and reference the notes I wrote down earlier every so often.  I've noticed that if I try to write a legit outline, like capital letters and Roman numerals, I end up writing basically an essay because I don’t really know when to stop writing the basic information.  I've found that what works best for me is to write down general information about each part of the paper and sometimes order them into paragraphs with like the subject part name in my outline (like for history, Civil War in p1) and then free write the rest with the information I know.

I think overall each course needs to receive different forms of research.  English requires much more support because it’s such a broad subject so it requires more searching to find someone who has the same opinion as you.  Whereas subjects like history or science, the information is standard.  It’s always the same and the only challenge is finding enough detail on the subject matter.  Actually writing for each class is also different.  In high school, my AP Lit and AP Gov essays were written entirely different.  English requires explanation and analysis whereas history just needs the straight answer.

In regards to the article we read, I definitely used the pens, highlighters and post it notes.  While I used them to draw all over the pages, I also used them to annotate the passages like she did.  I really like her method of “brainstorming” in which she creates a web of post it notes.  It seems like it would be beneficial for me because I tend to switch my thoughts around a lot.

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