Karly Triantafilu

Instructor: Brendan Hawkins

ENC2135

September 1, 2017

Low Stakes Assignment Number One

When I was younger I thought that writing was simply a task that had to be done to

complete an assignment. However, going through high school I learned that writing is so much

more than that. I had many teachers that inspired me to write more about things that I cared

about, and they taught me that writing is so much more than a monotonous task that just needs to

get done.

The first teacher that sparked a greater interest in writing was my capstone seminar

teacher, Mrs. Lewandowski. For this class, we had to complete many small research projects and

papers, culminating in a final research paper the second year that was to be at least 5,000 words.

At the beginning of my two-year experience with this program, I hated writing. I thought it was a

necessary evil, something to be detested. But as the initial year went on I learned how to write

more efficiently, and how to not be afraid of word counts. She taught me that writing is

something great, something that will help me express myself to many different people across

many different cultures. One of the misconceptions that I had about writing was that at some

point, your skill level gets stagnant. You can no longer improve. However, Mrs. Lewandowski

taught me that wasnt true. Every week she would teach us new techniques, new citation styles,

new ways to make a reader interested in our work. During the second year of the program, the

most important thing that Mrs. Lewandowski taught me was to not be afraid of word counts, to
simply ignore them and then go back during revision to either add more words to reach the

count, or delete words to get it closer to the count. That was a very important lesson for me.

The second teacher that taught me a different meaning for writing was Mrs. Reale. She

was a reading teacher who worked with students that failed to reach the reading and writing

benchmarks of the previous year. I could co-teach with her and help some of the students. Being

able to help students younger than me was inspiring. I had never thought about how writing

wasnt something that came easy to everyone. Some of these students couldnt even spell our

school name correctly. One day that stands out in my mind is when I worked with small groups

and tried to teach them the basics of writing an introduction paragraph. It truly made me smile

when I finally saw a breakthrough in one of the students. He was so happy, it was as if someone

had given him a winning lottery ticket. That was the day that I learned that knowing how to write

isnt something that should be taken for granted.

Overall, these two teachers truly shaped my definition of writing. If you were to ask me

what writing was before I met them, I would have told you it was a necessary evil. However,

after experiencing their classes, I would define reading as an always evolving skill that should

not be taken lightly, or for granted.