December 20, 2019

Sergio Garcia

9027 149th Street 

Jamaica, NY 11435

Sergio Garcia

3116 68th Street

Woodside, NY 11377

Dear Sergio,

I hope you are enjoying being thirteen. You have no idea how much I miss being young, and being stress-free. I miss the days where all we had to worry about was about what was gonna be for lunch at school the next day.

 I know that you have just arrived into what it seems to be like a new world to you, and that writing in English isn’t something you have mastered, and to tell you the truth, even the adult you has not done it either. Coming to this country has been a challenge, not only because you can barely speak english, but because you never bothered to develop writing skills in spanish, so writing in english seems impossible. I know that you have not always gotten outside of your comfort zone to learn more about writing, and that you have always preferred to learn more about science or mathematics. However, writing skills are far more important to succeed in life than you think.

You must be surprised, but yes, I  made it to college! And believe it or not, writing was one essential component to get to where we are. Throughout the years, we wrote emails, essays, lab reports, and many different types of writing. Over the years, however, there have been times where procrastination wins over us, and we end up writing things at the last minute, without revising what we have written, which I believe is essential in all types of writing. One of the main reasons why taking time to revise your work is important is to make sure whoever your audience is receives the message of your work, but also to let your work be criticized to ameliorate your writing skills. To be able to not procrastinate will not only allow you to perhaps finish earlier, but will also allow you to work more on the message you are trying to portray, and see if your piece of writing flows well with the appropriate tone and language. I know this sounds like I have mastered all I am writing, but to be really honest with you, I am writing this paper after procrastinating for several days. It definitely takes time to master all these skills, and to develop all the habits that helps with your writing. 

It is now the end of the first semester of college, and the idea of developing a theory of writing has come. You may wonder what it is, and so do I, if I am being honest. Well, I guess that to discover what my theory of writing I  should look at different writings I have developed throughout the years. 

I have gone through several experiences which have helped me to develop the skill of revision, as well as to develop a habit to stop procrastinating. While taking a College Now class at Lehman College a few summers back, I had to write an email with our lab report attached to it. However, since it was summer we decided to procrastinate, and have fun with everyone else in the class, rather than work on the lab and send the email. When the time came to finally sent this final assignment, I wrote the email but my email as the receiver. We sent it to ourselves! When we tried to send it again, we received an email from our professor saying that we had not attached anything on the email, which meant that he had not received our lab report. Rushing through writing can allow you to make several mistakes you would not even notice, and in this case, almost cost us our summer. 

Getting into college meant, we had to write a personal essay. In this essay we talked about the time we presented how everyone in our AP US History class was born in the United States, and we being the only ones born in a different country felt that we had the privilege of understanding different societies, the one you just arrived to, and the one where you just arrived from. Writing this essay was not an easy task. Given that we never thought that writing could be important, we never cared to develop any writing skills. We spent several hours trying to come up with a topic to write about. Many of our friends helped us revise the things we wrote, and helped us come up with ideas to write about. However, when we were ready to send the essays to all the colleges we wanted to apply to, we did not revise it since we had been procrastinating. We had sent the writing that could define our future without even thinking about double checking what  we had written. Unfortunately, we did not get into the colleges that we wanted to get in. Many factors affected this, but perhaps spending a little more time revising your work could have changed everything. 

I am almost done with our first semester of college, and I have still not learned from our mistakes. During this first semester, we learned more in depth about many rhetorical terms that we thought we knew, and how they work together with each other. For example, how the genre of your writing and the audience can define the language and the tone you use while writing. For example, this semester we are taking a biology class that requires us to write lab reports. Given that it is a lab report, which in this case is our genre, and the audience is the teacher assistant, then we must write in a formal tone while only using peer reviewed articles to set our hypotheses. After writing the first lab report, we thought we had done well. However, by not revising what we had written, we did not include the proper in-text citations, which we should always include. This ended us costing many points in our grade. 

Before the start of this semester, I had always been insecure about showing someone else my writing pieces. Not being able to get into the colleges I really wanted to get into, not getting the grades in certain writing assignments, and not being able to receive approval from my teachers about my writing made me think I would never be a good writer. However, now that the semester has ended, I have realized how revision has really helped me see that perhaps my ideas are not as bad as I thought. Before, the only people who really read my writing pieces were only my teachers. Now that I see that my peers, and even some of my professors approve of what I write, I am more prone to let myself out of my comfort zone and let others revise my writing.

 Currently, I am writing a research paper for my sociology class, and the first step I have taken was to research for topics that are relevant to the assignment. I have decided to free-write for five minutes to see what I know so far about the topics, and what I could write about as well. I am looking for peer-reviewed writing pieces, while setting up a structure for my writing. However, while doing all this I keep on asking some of my friends to read over and over my writing. I believe that the more I write, the more I need to ask for a critique, since I know this will make my paper better. Before I submit, I want to read over my writing, to check for grammar mistakes, but also to make sure that my writing portrays the main purpose of this paper.

Writing may come in several different ways, from poems to song lyrics to lab reports, writing surrounds everything we do. However, I believe that being able to revise your own work, to not procrastinate and therefore not rush it, and to let yourself be criticized and let yourself out of your comfort zone allows you to develop a good writing piece. I know that you still have a long way until you get to where I am, and I know I still have a long way to get to where I want to be. I just want to tell you again that writing is essential for everything you do from now on. Attempt to better yourself in any possible way you can. Like someone once told me, “you have a beautiful mind, and more people should hear it”. Writing is not an easy task, and as I struggle to write this letter to you because I am struggling with my theory of writing, I still encourage you explore writing, and explore what you are capable of. To conclude, I want to tell you that going over your work, and to stop procrastinating not only affects your writing, but it also affects your life overall.

With love,

First Year of College Sergio