Fictions of Sustainability has been an eye-opening course for me. Although this is partially in terms of the course's content and texts, I've also gained insight in how I write. 

Up until close to the end of the semester, I'd had a bad habit of trying to write an extremely polished first draft for every paper I turned in. Obviously, this just doesn't work. I'd end up halfway through what I was writing and not know where I was going, I'd struggle endlessly with finding just the right word, I'd either get to the point too early or never even get to the point at all. While the paper this sort of writing produced still tended to be well written as an end product, my process was so much more time-consuming than it needed to be. I'd get stuck thinking that the fastest way to write an essay is to just start writing off the bat, no prewriting necessary, but I've learned that this seems to be completely false, at least for me.

This problem continued all the way up until I wrote my draft for my resource narrative. I probably wouldn't have even done anything differently, had it not been for our professor's "Your First Draft should be Shit" speech, which is exactly what you'd expect from a speech titled as such - a first draft does not need to be polished in any way whatsoever, just write it and revise later, or else you constantly end up stuck on trying to achieve perfection the first time around.

I recall the evening I was working on my research narrative, I'd been in my room with another girl from my floor who also had an essay she was writing. Or, at least, struggling to start writing. In an attempt to help her get going, I ended up giving her a paraphrased version of the "Your First Draft should be Shit" speech. I feel as though this speech should be given at the beginning of all writing classes, due to how widespread the issue of writing drafts seems to be.

I've also found that it tends to be much easier and enjoyable for me to write about personal topics. Any writing that required I tell a story or share my opinions was an assignment that came rather effortlessly to me. I'd specifically try to pick out field note prompts that required I write about some sort of personal experience.

Of course, this was an issue for more impersonal topics we wrote about, like my close reading essay on The Grapes of Wrath. Aside from the difficulty with drafts I was experiencing with that paper, I just could not force myself to be interested in what I was writing, so the entire process felt slow and tedious, especially in comparison to my resource narrative that followed.

There are several instances where we've been given very open ended assignments, namely our resource narratives and this e portfolio. With such loose guidelines, I had a bit of difficulty starting both of these projects, if only because it took me awhile to decide on what to write about. That's not to say I don't love having that liberty, though. Once I was set on a topic I was happy with, all the hard work was done, and everything that followed was easy. 

I remember shortly after having submitted my resource narrative draft, I'd been reading over several other students' essays for peer review, and panicked a bit at how different they were from mine. Here I was, having just put together a highly personal essay, and the drafts I was reading were all light on narration and very research heavy. In fact, my draft didn't even have any research in it at that point. It was worrying at first, though in hindsight I suppose having widely variable types of essays for such an open prompt is a good thing. I'd just been concerned I may have been straying too far away from the original assignment, especially since, at first glance, my topic, Sensory Processing Disorder, has very little to do with sustainability.

Office hours were very helpful for dealing with this problem, I've found, since I could get feedback on if my paper was getting too far off the assigned topic.

All in all, Fictions of Sustainability has been my favorite class this semester (I swear I'm not just saying that for a good grade). The small class size is wonderful, and so are the discussions we've had in class. The field trips we embarked on across campus were a nice change of pace, and so were the assignments, like the meal we cooked in groups. More than anything, though, I'm incredibly happy with how the class has helped me understand and develop my writing, which will stay with me for the rest of college and beyond.