Hello, my name is Bryton Bird and I graduated from Diman Regional in 2024. I’m majoring in Engineering Science Transfer. I was never really a reader growing up, I just couldn’t imagine the world from the stories in my head and make them feel fun and exciting, but there are a few books I really enjoyed such as “The Outsiders”, by S.E Hinton, as well as “The Catcher and the Rye” by J.D Salinger. When it comes to writing however, I was much better with and enjoyed it as apposed to reading, since I make the world myself and let my mind do the talking.
After reading “Ten Ways To Think About Writing”, by E Shelly Reid, I learned that there were a lot of things about writing I was knocking myself for when there were other ways around. The first point that really connected with me was “Wash-And-Wear Paragraphs”, as the author explains that paragraph length should depend on the writers purpose and point they’re trying to make. This resonated with me as I struggled a lot with the mental aspect of questioning my own essays because I thought they were too short. The next point that stood out to me came from “Fruit Jell-O: Balancing Arguments & Examples”, in that writing without providing evidence and guidelines for your examples can lead to messy, hard to understand work, which was something I used to do a lot as a kid with a brain thinking about something new every other second. The final point I’d like to bring up that made me think about how I write came from “Short Time Writing: Use Your Higher Brain”. The author separates your brain into a “lower” and “higher” side, the lower representing more impulsiveness and rushing, while the higher brain represents control and taking your time to understand the text in front of you, whether that be through note taking or simply giving it a re-read. Overall, I learned a lot about writing and how to improve my own writing, as well as develop my own unique way of writing.