An Honest Review of this Blog (and poor writing, I guess)

Hello, reader. This blog has, like many blogs, become dominated by posts about itself rather than posts about the world or about my own experience here in Davidson. Warning: this one is exactly the problem.

As some may have noticed, I closed my blog down for several months so that future employers wouldn't see my horribly sloppy writing from my first two years of college. I have since realized, though, that I was ashamed of my previous writing because of how much I have grown as a writer. This blog has been an excellent resource for me to hone my writing skills outside of the classroom on any topic I wish, with no regard to word count or content requirements.

Now, I must admit, most of my growing as a writer has been in the classroom, under close supervision by a professor or mentor, but I also realize how important it is to write crappily. I'm making up a word here and maybe that's indicative of exactly what I'm getting at, but it has been incredibly useful in developing my own voice to write blog posts which make little sense, or emails which I end up deleting before typing all over again, or "shitty first drafts" to get my own academic or journalistic writing started.

Writing, like basketball, requires endless practice in order to get good. I was never tall and not particularly athletic as a child, so basketball didn't really work out for me. Writing, on the other hand, will likely be a large chunk of what I do in the future. While my voice is not completely developed by the second semester of my junior year, I can honestly say that I know I have grown so very much as a writer simply by making mistakes on blogs like this one. Writing articles for the Davidsonian I know I will hate to read a year or two down the road has also been part of the process, too, I must admit.

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To anyone considering finding a way to practice your own writing, I have this to tell you:

Be prepared to fail, and learn to fail well. I've received quite a few horrible grades on essays I thought were pure gold, but I have learned how to really understand where my errors were (without taking it personally). Understanding how I failed has really allowed me to adapt and refine my writing style so that argument and evidence make sense to readers of any audience in a way that (mostly) brings me pride in what I have created. Your professor, your mother, your editor, and your classmate all proofread or edit your work not because it brings them joy to read your work (though maybe it does sometimes), but because they want you to succeed as a writer - if not for you, for themselves. Be prepared to endure slog. It's long, and you may get frustrated at yourself and your readers, but the process is important and you'll learn so much.