Practice Makes Imperfect

By Mackenzie Loucks

It was a long time before I felt comfortable with my own writing abilities, and especially before I felt confident about them. For years, I struggled with writing and told myself that I disliked it, when I actually just thought I wasn’t creative enough to be considered a “writer.” Just recently, I realized that the reason this bothered me so much was because it made me feel like I wasn’t smart enough. The identity of being a bad writer has a stigma surrounding it that has the power to make people feel this way. Not creative enough. Not smart enough. Not good enough. Personally, my own experiences of feeling excluded from writing are what drive me to help support my peers and incorporate inclusivity in the Writing Centre.

These feelings of disliking my own writing began in high school. My English teacher assigned tons and tons of essays to be written. I’m sure you can imagine how thrilled I was by this at the time. But it wasn’t until after we had tragically lost her before my senior year that I understood how she was only helping my classmates and I to become skilled writers. It wasn’t just the fact that we had exhausted the famous five-paragraph essay, but that we were encouraged to be creative in our own writing styles and with topics of our own choice. However, just as I was starting to feel some confidence in writing, I had to take the Provincial ELA exam, and I did horribly. For those of you who don’t know, a Provincial exam is a Government-administered final exam that is mandatory for all Grade 12 students in the province. I tried to avoid losing hope, and I even improved my score when I rewrote the exam the following term. But I still hadn’t done as well as I had hoped. Unfortunately, this experience made me despise writing. It reinforced the feeling that I wasn’t good enough or smart enough.

During my first year at The University of Winnipeg, like many of my peers, I was required to take an Academic Writing course. Going into that class, my expectations were not set very high. But as the course progressed, I continued to get surprisingly great marks on my papers and writing pieces. I’m sure many students have experienced this; when you receive satisfactory grades in a specific class, you feel more confident about it and even start to like it more. This is how I felt about that writing course. But I realized that it wasn’t only that I was doing well, but that once again, I was allowed to choose my own topics and write in my own style. On top of that, we were encouraged to revise our writing once we had received our marks. This allowed my peers and I to learn from any problem areas we had and to improve our writing. As it turns out, I actually can write; I had already been equipped with the basic skills since high school. I now know that I have my English teacher to thank for my writing abilities and for inspiring me to put them to use. Even though I still have trouble identifying myself as a writer, I am more aware of and confident with my abilities. I even find myself wanting to write for fun!

Currently, I am now in my second year of university, and I was presented with the possibility to become a writing tutor in the university’s Tutoring Centre. Since it was such a great opportunity, I couldn’t turn that down. I am still learning and getting used to my new role, but I love that I can use this privilege to help my peers. I don’t want them to feel like I did. I don’t want them to feel like they aren’t creative, smart, or good enough to write. This is why inclusivity in the Writing Centre is important. These students need to know that they are all capable of being great writers; it just takes practice. Obviously, there are no perfect writers. The process is continuous and there’s always room for change in a writing piece. But each writer that comes to be tutored clearly wants to succeed, and it’s not easy to place yourself in such a vulnerable position. I know that, personally, it makes me super uncomfortable to have another person read something that I’ve written. This shows how helping writers feel included in an atmosphere where they are equals could greatly help them learn from and improve their writing. From what I’ve witnessed, every single writer I’ve worked with as a tutor has great thoughts and ideas; they just struggle with putting those ideas into words. By coming for help in a tutoring session, a writer is showing that they aren’t allowing the struggle of writing to discourage them; they maybe just need some extra support. Hopefully, by giving my peers this support by assisting their learning, they will also feel included along the way.

Mackenzie Loucks was born and raised in the Southwest corner of Manitoba in a very small town. She is now attending The University of Winnipeg for the second year and is majoring in Biopsychology. She just recently began working at the university as a writing tutor.