First Entry

My name is Breanna Kelly and I am a freshman at Texas Christian University. I am from Kingwood, Texas which is right outside of Houston and I am majoring in advertising/public relations and minoring in radio-television-film. I am fairly confident with my writing abilities because I have had a lot of great teachers and opportunities to improve my writing. Outside of school I like to write advertising slogans, commercials, and screenplays. However, I always find it difficult to finish a screenplay because I can never get a story to fit in chronological order. I also write a lot of e-mails to my family and friends and sometimes I write hand written letters to my grandparents because they lack the technical skills needed to use a computer. I enjoy writing outside of traditional school papers because you have the freedom and ability to create a story and shape every part of it. Writing gives you the ability to create a story that can be interpreted by anyone based on his or her beliefs. Novels and screenplays allow the writer and reader to become anything or anyone they want. I normally like to read fictional books because they are powerful tools that allow me an escape from the real world. They broaden my imagination as well. That is one reason I believe that writing is important. I think writing is a very important skill to know in life because whether someone is writing a letter to a boss, writing an e-mail to a friend, or someone has a job revolves around writing, like advertising, writing is huge part of everyday life. My high school teachers probably had the most influence on who I am as writer because I always had to make sure I tailored my writing to their class. They taught me more than just correct punctuation and usage of words because they gave me constructive criticism that helped me focus on what I needed to improve. They also gave me a basic method of outlining so that my papers would be more organized and easier to write. Usually when I write, I set up an outline with my thesis statement, main points, quotations, and conclusion. This strategy of writing usually is what I always use because it has always worked with the assignments I have been given. However, when I write for enjoyment, I usually just write in paragraph form so that my thoughts can flow onto the paper. I never really liked analyzing the novels I read in class because I always had trouble interpreting what the author really meant in the text, however, if there was one thing I could change about my writing I would like to be better at analyzing text. When I have to analyze novels in papers, I tend to summarize the book more than I examine the text. I would like to improve my critical reading skills because I think it is important to my future studies. I have read, understand, and agree with the course syllabus which I see as the contract for our course.