Sabrina Shao's 5th Blog Post

Last week, I went to my first service learning session where I had to help an 11th grader write her thesis. The whole week before, I was extremely nervous because after reading over the thesis writing guidelines given to them, I realized that I too do not know how to write a thesis. When I got there, I realized that these students (and I mean this in a non-offensive way at all) really did not know how to write. Their writing skills were not at the level of regular 11th graders which made me feel a lot better. They had great ideas but were having a hard time putting it down on paper which is where I came in. My person would describe to me something and together, we would try to word it to make it more formal. Eventually, we made some progress and wrote what I think was a decent thesis.

One thing I want to improve on is letting her write her own paper. I realized that when I was trying to teach her, I was also trying to force on her my writing style. I've had teachers do it to me before and even though it was slightly beneficial, it was not a great feeling because it made me feel stupid. For whoever I help next, I plan to backoff and let them form their own writing style. I need to remember that I am only there as a guide and not there to basically write their paper for them. I actually enjoyed this more than I thought I would. It was not very difficult because I got lucky with my person who turned out to be very nice. She was very receptive to my ideas and very cooperative.


This weekend, I spent a lot of time trying to write my paper. I was in a classroom in Ryder Hall with a group of my friends trying to get work done. I had a blank google doc pulled up, all ready to be written on. Instead of writing, I spent approximately 2 hours on TikTok, 30 minutes just rolling on the ground and an hour napping before I finally typed something on that document. I have found that writing is difficult for a variety of reasons. The first one is starting. I had my idea all set when I opened the blank document but I just couldn't bring myself to actually start writing. I knew that if I start working, I must not stop because I would lose the flow that I had built up.

When I finally started, I had a tough time writing the piece. After every sentence I typed, I would read over it and change it until I was satisfied. I have never been one to write whatever that came to mind. I was the type of person who had to stop after each sentence and edit it until it flowed right. This is another one of my problems because when I do this, it takes a really long time, which is another reason why I don't like writing. One thing I noticed, however, was that writing about myself and my past was a lot easier than analyzing some theme in a novel. The words came a lot easier and it definitely took less time, however, I still struggled because I had to pause after writing each sentence. This is probably because in high school, I always did my papers last minute so my first draft could never be a shitty first draft since it was technically my final draft as well. I hope that this class would help me work on changing my writing strategy. I want to be able to write a shitty first draft so I can keep editing it instead of just writing one draft and then submitting it.