Senior Year First Semester Reflection

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I think I grew a lot as a writer this semester. For one, I wrote a lot more compared to eleventh grade. However, I think what was more crucial to my development as a writer was that I viewed essays as more of an opportunity to explore the ideas floating around in my head as opposed to a way to practice how closely I can follow a certain structure (which was how I approached essay-writing last year, even though the year before I had not done so in tenth grade).
Even though it wasn't fun to write essays last year because of this mindset, being able to go back to viewing essays as "fun" this year (as fun as writing essays can be) after feeling like it was something restrictive reaffirmed the importance of essay-writing for me as a way to deepen my personal understanding of a work beyond the understanding I had of it had I not had to create some kind of meaningful commentary on it under time pressure (which I think allows a lot of ideas I would've never considered come through).
Unfortunately, I think my development was relatively stagnant as a reader. While I read for school, I wasn't able to discover much new about myself as a reader because I got most of my reading done at school. Ironically, I used to be a very avid reader in elementary and middle school (I would read 3-4 books a week!), so now that the frenzy of college apps are done and over (Worst time of my life!), I feel like I can finally go back to combing the Troy Public Library's bookshelves in my free time — free from any guilt that I should be doing something else.💌

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