I enjoy writing, really, I do. I took a creative writing class my senior year of high school, which I enjoyed immensely. And while I've never enjoyed writing essays (really, who does?), it's something I've always been pretty good at it, so it's never bothered me terribly. So when I learned that I'd be doing something called a fieldstudy, that would culminate in a sizable paper at the end of my first semester of college for my writing class, I thought, "How bad can it be?"
Turns out, not that bad. Not that great, either, though.
But please, allow me to explain.
When I write any kind of paper, no matter the subject, topic, or length, my usual modus operandi is to procrastinate for the weeks in advance that I know about the assignment and write it the night before. Now usually, this works out pretty well for me. I know teachers hate to hear this from students, but that's how I work. Something about the pressure to get it done, I suppose. In this case, however, I knew that I wouldn't be able to do that, considering the fieldstudy needs to be about 10-15 pages. Not only did I realize I wouldn't be able to write it the night before, I didn't have much choice. Week after week, I had to write about what I was doing, what I was thinking, how I was feeling. I had to write things that, ideally, would eventually end up in my fieldstudy in some form or another.
And frankly, that was kind of nice.
Being required to write, brainstorm, and outline for my fieldstudy allowed me to really get my ideas down in front of me and sift through them, eliminating the mediocre ones and keeping others that had potential. So merely from a drafting and editing standpoint, the process of writing this fieldstudy has been unusual for me, personally, but I'm always open to new ways of doing things and it's made me aware of just another way to write research papers.
I was a big fan of what I was allowed to actually physically put into the fieldstudy. Oftentimes, research papers come out feeling very dry and unappealing because of the formality and lack of individual voice with which they are written. The fact that I was not only able, but encouraged to inject my own feelings and subjectivities into this fieldstudy made writing it not only more enjoyable, but more personal. The opportunity to explore a place so dear to me and to try and understand that place's significance in other people's lives let me be incredibly invested in what I was doing. It's a great thing to be able to share a place that has made such an impact on your life with other people and explain to them why matters, not just to you, but why it should matter to them and to others.
So all in all, the process of writing this fieldstudy was very different from how I normally write things, but I'm not one to turn my nose up at new, perhaps more effective ways of doing things. Writing this study has been a great opportunity, one that I would not hesitate to take advantage of again.