Personal Assessment My Greatest Strength

¶ … Personal Assessment

My greatest strength as an academic writer is choosing a topic that I care about, and then narrowing the topic to form the basis of a paper that is interesting and provocative. In the case of the adoption paper, for example, I initially wanted to discuss the history of adoption and then explore the practice from a number of different perspectives. The topic was too broad for a ten page paper and, as an academic paper, it lacked a thesis statement. After some research, I found that some challenges exist for adoptees and their families, particularly with respect to international adoptees, and I wanted to find out more. It became evident that I was looking at a special population and one that required particular considerations. The scope of my research project thus narrowed, I was able to form a thesis that then guided my writing.

Both the outline and the annotated bibliography were useful in maintaining the focus on the chosen topic. The outline let me create a logical progression of ideas and helped me formulate some questions that I wanted to answer in the body of my paper. By preparing an annotated bibliography, I got a good sense of what was available in terms of supporting literature. I got validation that the problems I considered were indeed problems that were of interest to researchers. It was good to have validation that my ideas and questions were relevant to the community of adopted children.

There will be other opportunities as a student to further strengthen my writing skills. I believe that producing good writing is like exercising a muscle; with consistent and conscious effort, my ability to write well will grow stronger. I have already found that, the more I write, the easier it is to clarify and organize my thoughts. Looking at a blank page is no longer quite so intimidating, because I realize it is a process of putting down an idea, then adding more words and sentences to elaborate. One good idea leads to another.

The paper on the challenges of raising and educating an adopted child stands out as my best example of scholarly work. The length of the paper, in my case, required that I narrow down an idea rather than expand on one. It was a process to define just how deep and how broad I could take a topic in the amount of space assigned. Learning to write to specification in this way is an important skill. It is as important, I think, as learning to formulate and organize ideas.