Dear Reader,

During this semester, I have learned a lot from myself and my writing skills. During that time, I’ve written many different essays and submitted many written assignments during my FIQWS. At certain times, some of these felt like something out of my level of writing but I have learned to adjust and expand. More importantly, writing is not one of my best skills and is not something I am comfortable doing. I was not even comfortable opening up about personal events that have occurred or even giving my point of view on something. In the end, I decided to put my best effort forward and I have learned a lot now than when I first started this semester.

In my first assignment, the Outsider Narrative Essay, I talked about how during my middle school years I was not someone who had a lot of things in common with my other classmates, one of them being basketball. In this essay, I talked about how I wanted to fit in and be related to my other classmates. Things did not go to plan when I started but I have learned to adjust to what I was dealt with. What I have learned from this experience is that I do not have to do things to fit in and I should be thankful for the things I was able to do back then. Being independent and doing things other people have not done should be something to embrace.

For my second assignment, the Metaphor Essay, I focused on the use of vaccines. I felt that vaccines have been a sensitive topic ever since the COVID pandemic and I thought it was an interesting topic to mention. I then used a metaphor for vaccines with another metaphor from Eula Biss that related vaccines to slavery. This was a topic I struggled a bit on since I did not think I was going to be able to expand on two metaphors. Then I thought if I can relate vaccines to society, I can give two different perspectives on it. This assignment forced me to think outside the box and brainstorm which was something I do not normally do.

In the third assignment, the Critical Lens Essay, I used one of Arthur Frank’s illness narratives ( Quest narrative) and how it related to the target lens Walter White from Breaking Bad. This was one of the assignments I enjoyed since Breaking Bad was a show I like very much and I could give it different perspectives on how to look at it. I decided on the Quest narrative since it was the narrative that related to Walter the most and I could write a lot about him. This assignment gave me a lot of freedom and I was able to write about it but also give an alternative view of the quest narrative that I thought was unique about it.

For this last written assignment, the Research Paper, this was the assignment I struggled the most with. Research is not something I have ever done until this year, but this assignment gave me inspiration to do it. This assignment gave me a lot of freedom in what I could write about, and something I have been very curious about was heart disease. Heart disease is something I was not very familiar with. I thought this would be the best way to learn about it. Doing this assignment took me a lot of time since I had to find sources, which was the hardest part of the assignment. Once I had an idea of what I wanted to relate heart disease to, the sources came easily to me. I ended up comparing heart disease to people in certain levels of income which I thought was very interesting. Once everything came together, I related it to my point of view of everything which was backed up by the research I did for this assignment.

For whoever is reading this, I want you to learn about the personal growth as a writer I went through. When reading this, I want you to develop confidence and learn about adjusting to certain situations along with the willingness to tackle difficult topics. You should be able to take a step outside your comfort zone and embrace new situations. I want you to reflect and think about how you see different perspectives and expand on them. After all that, you should be able to give your unique perspective on things and dare to increase your curiosity.