Personal Narrative: What I Learned In My Writing Class

Writing isn’t something that was ever stressed in my high school and since I am a computer science major, didn’t think that I would really be needing to write very often. But, this class has completely changed my perspective on writing, along with how I write. I have learned how to better plan my papers, create strong arguments, and how to create a good flow in the final product. Arguably the most important skill that I have learned is that it is essential to plan my essays. Prior to this class, I would just write all of my thoughts down without creating an outline. After that, I would just briefly proofread my essay and that was my final copy. Now, I make sure I spend a decent amount of time on an outline and make it incredibly detailed so that my thoughts are all in line with each other and overall, the essay makes sense. Then, I will read over my rough draft multiple times and have other people proofread it as well, just to make sure that it makes sense and is as clear as it can be. My papers went from taking less than an hour to write to taking 2 or 3 hours at the least.
In all of the papers that I had written before this class, I just stated facts. I have learned that in order to truly have a strong argument, every claim that you are making has to be debatable so that people can have an opposing view on your topic but can then be convinced by the textual evidence that supports your claim. I have learned that textual evidence plays a much bigger role in an essay than I had previously thought. Prior to college, I would put very little textual evidence in my essays to support the claims that I was making. Now, I know that I should include at least one example of textual evidence for every claim that I am making because there is no better way to support an argument than with words that come right from the