Senior Writing Project-Reflective Essay

As I look back at the writings I have created in these past few years, I realize that other than my junior year, I haven't written any narrative pieces, in any classes. The focus throughout my high school curriculum has been toward argumentative, analysis, and informative writings. Only in my junior year did I write my first creative writings in the form of a short story and a poem. The first creative writing I had to write a "Vomit" Draft. A vomit draft was the very first draft of a paper with little to no guidelines. "Bring two minutes to life" was the only instruction. We had to throw down 500 words without paying any real attention to punctuation or grammar. This kind of freedom associated with such creative writing was an alien concept to me. Getting used to writing without a structure that we had to follow, without a set of guidelines we had to abide by took a while. But, this kind of writing really helped me learn and improve, not just my writings, my organization and my time management skills as well. Knowing that I had to write such a demanding paper (it turned out to be fourteen pages longs), I had to improve my time management skills, which, up till junior year, hadn’t really been a challenge. Forcing myself then, to distribute time wisely has really helped me now, with the terrific pressures and burdens of college applications. This creative writing segment in my junior year helped my prepare, in a way, for these college essays. It gave me the free thinking approach I needed to hammer down my narrative essays this year. I only wish that there was more of such assignments earlier on in our high school career. The poem I wrote was a daybook entry written in a trip to the soccer fields last year. We had about ten minutes in the cold to write a poem about, not just what we saw around us, but using all of our