Week Three Essay: Writing Experience

In high school I completed the International Baccalaureate Program, which focused on overarching themes throughout the school year and taught us how to analyze, think and question things we learned in each class. Similar to AP, but in my opinion more difficult, it was less about memorizing facts and dates, and more about exploring the whys and hows of history, english, social studies and math. Our testing was all purely essay as well, with the exception of sciences and math, which featured some short answer in addition to multiple choice.

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For instance, my senior IBHL english class focused on the theme of love. Every book we read had this theme and throughout our time we wrote plenty of essays analyzing the colors, characters, motifs, etc. All of this culminated in a end-of-the-year test that was part written part oral, where we basically had an hour to write an analysis of a book passage and explain it to our teacher. Through this course, and my other IB classes, I learned a lot about writing essays about literature. I learned how to recognize and analyze elements within a novel, connect these themes to other stories and create well-written and lengthy essays in a short amount of time.

With the exception of college credit, none of this helped me when I came to OU.

Not to discredit my high school, I thought the IB program was a great opportunity. I got the best teachers, had classes with the best students and learned a lot of skills I use today. But, my writing has definitely changed since then.

I remember my first journalism writing class; Writing for Mass Media. I had to throw out everything I'd learned in an English class (namely, Oxford commas), and relearn how to use punctuation, when to use abbreviations and how to properly list states. It was a huge change for me and that class was not only difficult, but a huge learning experience. I hated that class while I was in it, but now I am thankful I learned AP style and know basic rules that I am now expected to know. I like the way I write now better anyway. Less fluff, more information. At least that's the journalistic way.

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I enjoy being able to read a newspaper or magazine and see the same rules and concepts put into play there. They write and follow the same rules as I do and they are  "in the real world." I think the essay writing I did in high school served me well and taught me many things. The IB program challenged me to think harder, delve deeper and question more often than I would have, but college has taught me a more practical, applicable style of writing that I use today.