The two posts I read for this assignment were Hannah’s Semester One: A Perfectionist Can’t Be a Great Writer and Cormac’s New Beginnings. I was surprised to see that both of them had struggled with almost exactly the same obstacles this semester as I had. It was enlightening to see how they both had gone about overcoming these setbacks, because we had done and realized a lot of the same things in the process.
Hannah’s original post was for the Metacognition prompt and discussed how she had struggled with her perfectionist tendencies which interfered with her ability to write at her full potential. It talked about how she had eventually realized that her perfectionism was counter-productive and even touched a bit on how she had learned to let go of ideas in order to move forward with her learning.
Hannah:
I’m glad I’m not the only one who had to deal with managing her perfectionism this semester. Just like you, I had a lot of trouble (especially at the beginning of the year) with writing assignments because I was afraid to type a single word that wasn’t immediately and exactly what I wanted to say. I would start to edit my own work before it had even left my brain, and what I was left with was a fragmented, disjointed, and badly-written assignment, which only continued to agitate the perfectionist side of me. It was a frustrating and exhausting way to go about writing.
It took me a while to reach the same realization you did: that I needed to put all of my thoughts out there before I even started to think about picking out the perfect words and phrases. Writing first and refining later did not come easily at all, but when I finally reached a point where I could do this my writing improved dramatically, as did my outlook on writing. I’ve found that this strategy is highly applicable to subjects besides English as well; starting a math problem is much easier for me if I’m not immediately afraid to take a chance and experiment a little with the equations. Since I’m not afraid of temporary imperfection, I can allow myself to investigate ideas and explore possibilities a little more in my work; and it’s a very free feeling. I’m glad we were both able to reach this point this year!
Cormac’s original post was about how he had learned to let go of ideas that were important to him, and how doing that had allowed him to move forward in his work and his learning. He brought up writing the poem as an example of how his initial struggle with letting go had held him back, which is actually very similar to my own experience.
Cormac:
I was surprised to see that your reflection on first semester was actually really similar to my own. This semester also taught me how to let go of initial ideas in order to reach more developed and interesting ones.
Like you, I had a huge struggle with this lesson at first. I was turning in work that was acceptable, but nothing I was truly proud of. I was getting fairly good grades in return for my work, but it was an unsatisfying way to go about writing for me. One of my biggest turning points, which I can see you struggled with as well, was when we had to write poems for English. I am not a poet and my poetry skills leave a lot to be desired, so right from the get-go I wasn’t expecting anything amazing, but it turned out to be even harder than I expected. Not only could I not write anything good, I was having trouble coming up with ideas to write about at all. I had come up with an idea I was happy with, and spent days trying to develop it and pursue it further. Eventually, I had put myself into such a rut that I didn’t even want to finish the poem anymore, even if I did like my idea. I had been trying to push through the brick wall at the end of a cognitive alley, and I couldn’t get myself to turn around because it felt like starting over. It was very difficult for me to start backing away from my idea; to start letting go of content that I had worked hard on. However, this is eventually the only thing that allowed me to reach the final draft of my poem, which while still not perfect is greatly improved and greatly altered in comparison to my original.
I didn’t think other people would have had the same problem as I had, and I’m glad that I’m not the only one who struggled with this idea. Thanks for the post!
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