Hello,
I’ve went back and forth over what I wanted to blog about for the open blog post prompt. After receiving an assignment in my ELE 302 course that required me to write an autobiography over my literacy past I made a decision. I want to share with you all some of my opinions, experiences, and complaints that I have about writing. First, I will say that I have never really enjoyed writing and exploring my thoughts on paper. As a child, I would try to start a dairy, and I would write one or two entries, and never return to it again. With that being said, I have always loved the actual motion of writing. I prefer to write things down, rather than typing. For example, I like to hand write my class notes and I keep a very detailed handwritten agenda. During my K-12 years my go to distraction was practicing my cursive skills. So, I enjoy handwriting, just not actually having to free write or write over a topic. My indecisiveness makes writing a long and frustrating process for me. I can never make up my mind when it comes to sentence structure or topics. One way that I have made this problem easier on myself is to create a organizer before I began writing. I can use this prewriting time to work through all of the decisions I may face beforehand. I can recall my senior year of high school having to write a ten page paper. To this day, I believe it is still one of the worst assignments i’ve had to do. I did not get to choose the topic, so I was already uninterested, and the process made me extremely overwhelmed and frustrated. One of my main goals as a teacher is to not force students to do major assignments or papers over something they have no interest in. I want them to be able to enjoy the writing process and to express their creativity through writing. I understand how miserable it can be to have to spend weeks writing a paper that you have zero interest in, so hopefully I can take my experiences and provide better ones for my future students.
Faith McIntosh
Faith McIntosh 
YES!!!! That was very smart when it came to not wanting to give your future students assignments that they will be miserable doing. I feel like if you are interested in a topic, all the extra stuff like pre-writing, researching, etc., becomes so much easier. Which will lead to a higher success rate. I also relate on the diary thing where I’d write a few things for a few days and then never look back- haha. It’s crazy how you can love yet hate English and Literature at the same time.
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I am the same way about writing all of my class notes and keeping a hand written planner. And as much as I like to record my day- I was never (and still am not) good at keeping a “journal”.
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