My Goals

In my future I want to be a high school English teacher or better yet a professor at a university.  I need to improve on my writing skills before that day and hopefully this class will help me with that.  I have always thought that I was a decent writer but nothing special.  The various college courses that I have taken have showed me that I’m not actually as good as I used to believe.

My first grammatical issue is that I am confused on when to use the semi-colon.  In all of the ESSAYS, POEMS, and LETTERS [series of nouns connected by commas] I have used semi-colons maybe twenty times.  Throughout high school I was never taught when a semi-colon would be useful, and the difference between a semi-colon and a colon was never made clear  (COMPOUND SENTENCE WITH A COMMA AND FANBOYS).  I feel like using semi-colons would make my writing so much more powerful.  I think that incorporating semi-colons would allow me to link sentences more successfully than I do at this point in my writing.  By the end of the semester and this particular course I hope to fully understand when to use semi-colons and be able to incorporate them into my writing so that I can continue to improve as a writer.

I also have a hard time with clarity throughout my writing.  Often times my THOUGHTS AND IDEAS AND OPINIONS [series of nouns connected by “and”] become jumbled and unclear.  I think that the main reason for this is because I rarely have an outline before starting to write.  I prefer to just collect my thoughts throughout my writing ; it also becomes confusing (COMPOUND SENTENCE WITH A SEMI-COLON).  I hope that this course will help me to organize my writing better so that I can portray my IDEAS, THOUGHTS, AND OPINIONS [series of nouns connected by commas] successfully.  Many times I have heard that my writing would be great if I were more organized and clear.

I also use a lot of run on sentences.  I never know when to end a sentence and start a new one when I feel like I could say so much more.  I continue the sentence because it seems to be easy and clear.  However, when I read back through my writing I see that I have created complicated and confusing sentences.  I am confident that this course will help me to eliminate run on sentences from my writing.  Once I get a check on my run on sentences I should be able to improve my organization as well.

I have a lot to work on before I consider myself a successful writer.  I need to be able to use all things grammatical.  By the end of this course I would be very happy if I could fix all of the issues that I have discussed in the piece.  By fixing my run on sentence problem I should be able to fix my organization problem and learning to use semi-colons will be so helpful to me.  By the end of this course I expect myself to use semi-colons as often as the other grammatical symbols that I use.

*Sentence beginning with a FANBOYS:  I wanted to eat at a good restaurant because I wanted a good home cooked meal. But, my friend wanted to get fast food because it was cheaper and faster.