I\u2019m a writer. I always have been. I have a notebook full of fictional stories I scribbled in kindergarten.\u00a0I have journals upon journals that document my middle school, high school, and college experiences.\u00a0I have binders of poems, letters I never sent, conversations I never had. Writing was and is my outlet.\u00a0I always received good grades on my papers with little effort, and I was the one stuck editing my older\u00a0brothers\u2019 papers late at night. I didn\u2019t know what I wanted to do with writing, but I knew I was a writer\u00a0and always would be.<\/p>\n
My senior year of high school, I went through a sort of mid-school crisis and decided that I was going\u00a0to be a dietitian. My parents were trying to hide their confusion (and amusement) regarding this new\u00a0interest, but they knew it was just a phase. After realizing how much science was involved in that career,\u00a0I quickly abandoned the idea. I graduated and spent a year at Word of Life Bible Institute. Everyone\u00a0took the same classes there, so I didn\u2019t have to decide on a major just yet.<\/p>\n
After I graduated from WOLBI, I transferred to Cedarville. As soon as I read the first part of the first\u00a0sentence on the Professional Writing and Information Design (PWID) page, \u201cIf you like writing, editing,\u00a0and design\u2026\u201d I knew exactly what I was going to major in. So I transferred to Cedarville, technically\u00a0a sophomore but feeling like a freshman.<\/p>\n
One of my first papers due was all about defining technical communication (which is ironic and confusing\u00a0because the entire semester we were learning that technical communication can\u2019t be concretely\u00a0defined). During high school, I learned to procrastinate so well that I literally became unable to sit\u00a0down and focus on writing a paper until the night (or hours) before it was due. So naturally I saved\u00a0the bulk of this first paper till the night before it was due.<\/p>\n
A trait that I took pride in during high school would soon be my greatest enemy.\u00a0I finished the paper, turned it in, and didn\u2019t think about it again until I received an email saying that\u00a0my assignment had been graded. I nervously clicked the link and logged into my account. My heart\u00a0sank when I saw my grade.<\/p>\n
A C+??? Are you kidding me?!<\/p>\n
I had never received that low of a grade on a paper. I was devastated and embarrassed. So many\u00a0things were running through my mind. Why am I even in this major? Professor Carrington probably\u00a0thinks I\u2019m so dumb. I\u2019m not cut out for this. I\u2019m probably not even a good writer. Seriously, a C??<\/p>\n
After some time of grieving, a new wave of thoughts flooded in. I thought to myself, \u201cOlivia, you\u2019re in\u00a0a writing major. Everyone here is a good writer. Waiting till the last minute isn\u2019t enough anymore. You\u00a0need to learn to impress yourself with your writing.\u201d<\/p>\n
I came to the conclusion that I probably didn\u2019t even know how well I could write because I never\u00a0challenged myself to be better; I had always settled for waiting till the last minute to produce acceptable\u00a0work. But not anymore. I wanted to impress myself with my own writing, and last-minute work\u00a0wouldn\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n
Although still slightly embarrassed, I had a new sense of confidence and determination to take on the\u00a0rest of the semester with. I spent some more time on the next paper and was ecstatic when I received\u00a0a B+. When I saw the comment \u201cyou write well\u201d at the end of my paper, I thought I was going to explode\u00a0with happiness and pride.<\/p>\n
Now I\u2019m in my junior year, and I\u2019m happy to say I haven\u2019t received any more Cs on my papers. I have\u00a0learned the value of planning ahead, editing more than once, and not waiting till the last minute to\u00a0crank a paper (or project) out. Yes, there have been some late nights, and I still sometimes procrastinate\u00a0more than I should, but I\u2019m slowly erasing my high school habits.<\/p>\n
PWID has not only challenged and pushed me as a writer, editor, and designer, it has also provided\u00a0me with a tight-knit group of people with similar interests. I can say that I truly love my major and\u00a0fellow professional writers. I have been in class with (mostly) the same people since my first semester\u00a0here at Cedarville, and we really have become a little family. From goofing off in class, to working on\u00a0assignments late at night together, and even bickering like siblings, I couldn\u2019t have asked for a better\u00a0group of classmates and friends.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been saying for years that I\u2019m a writer. I always will be, whether I write manuals, publish blogs,\u00a0or simply journal my thoughts on life. PWID has not only made me a better writer, it has helped me\u00a0develop a higher standard for my writing. Sometimes all it takes is one C to turn your perspective\u00a0upside down.<\/p>\n
— Olivia Duffus (Senior)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m a writer. I always have been. I have a notebook full of fictional stories I scribbled in kindergarten.\u00a0I have journals upon journals that document my middle school, high school, and college experiences.\u00a0I have binders of poems, letters I never sent, conversations I never had. Writing was and is my outlet.\u00a0I always received good grades […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-students"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/thewritemajor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/thewritemajor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/thewritemajor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/thewritemajor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/thewritemajor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/thewritemajor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/thewritemajor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/thewritemajor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/thewritemajor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/thewritemajor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}