McCarthy Journaling Question #5

Throughout McCarthy's observation of Dave's writing habits over his college career, I actually wasn't able to draw many parallels to my own experiences writing in college thus far. Though I definitely need the directions of the assignment explained to me, like Dave does, I often find myself confident when long writing assignments are given in my courses. Over my academic career, my teachers, peers, and parents have always complimented my writing ability and, consequently, I've become confident in my ability to write in any course. In fact, I get excited when I am assigned a paper in a course like Math or Science, where I typically don't do exceptionally well on tests and quizzes. Although I am perfectly aware that I am not a phenomenal writer and I could use improvement in areas, I believe that my lack of hesitance towards an assignment allows me to handle a paper in a way that Dave's lack of confidence wouldn't allow him. Luckily, "Because of a number of successful classroom experiences with writing, and an ability to forget the less successful ones, Dave said, 'Writing is no problem for me. At work, in school, I just do it.'" As Dave received more positive feedback like I did, he became more confident in his writing.
Undoubtedly, the hardest aspect of writing in college for me is expanding my vocabulary. Throughout all of my papers, I tend to use all the same descriptive words and sentence structures. Hopefully over the next four years I will be able to expand my vocabulary through reading other texts and being exposed to writers with different styles than mine.