Hi, I would like to officially introduce myself to the world as a girl who has struggled with self-esteem issues and fears of not being enough for my whole life. Was I raised to look down on my self and my work as less than what it could or should be? Heck no. I was raised by loving parents who supported me every step of the way. Granted my dad would have preferred I become a pharmacist rather than an English Education major, he still supported my dreams of one day writing a book. And my mother, she would read every article I wrote and tell me how proud she was that I wrote so well and that I had the courage to share my writing with the world. And my older sister, she may have been a bit judgmental of how I dressed or did my makeup, but she was always proud of my ability to write. And my friends they supported my writing and often sought my advice when it came to editing their own writing. So, why after all of this positive support was I still more inclined to believe the person that said my writing was average, or worse, that my writing was crappy.
Perhaps it's a part of human nature that we are more inclined to believe our "haters" than to believe our supporters. Or perhaps I'm just being over dramatic but being overdramatic is a part of who I am just like my inability to believe that I am actually doing amazing things. Anyways, the reason why I am writing this article is that I recently received a grade on a writing assignment that made me doubt my writing ability and who hasn't. I know this is a common issue for a lot of freshmen because the style and expectations of college essay writing are often much different from that of high school, and that can be scary. And getting a bad grade on a writing assignment that you thought you did well on, well that's scary too.
And if you're anything like me your first thought when you receive that grade is probably to assume that you're a bad writer. But you're not. Just because one professor didn't like your paper doesn't mean you're a bad writer. It just means that what you wrote didn't fit their standards for the assignment. Maybe your paper wasn't focused enough on the topic, or maybe you lacked evidence, or maybe you just needed to reread it to see the grammar mistakes. But I repeat, you are not a bad writer.
So don't look at this as a failure, look at it as an opportunity to change and grow and become a better writer. But don't think that you're a bad writer, because you are not a bad writer, your writing style just wasn't what the professor was looking for at the time but that doesn't mean that it was wrong or bad in any way.
