Halfway Through

My first 2 weeks of the praxis writing challenge

It’s the end of my second week participating in the Praxis writing challenge. If you haven't read my article on this challenge, you can check it out here. Within this challenge, I am required to write a new article every day for the entire month of November; and today is the 14th day, and therefore the end of my second week. There’s a lot I have learned throughout the last two weeks, as well as a lot I still have to learn over the next two. Today I’d like to talk about some of the challenges I’ve come across, as well as some of the things I’ve learned so far.

I definitely had a rough start to this challenge. My first week was mostly spent training for a new job at Fed-Ex Ground, and due to this I had maybe an hour a day to devote to writing. Most of my first week’s posts were written very sloppy and without much attention to grammar or punctuation. One of my biggest challenges with writing is how I learned to write in the first place. As someone who was really into public speaking all throughout high school, most of my writing education came from writing speeches, and because of this I often struggle with proper punctuation. I found that during my first week, I made a lot of errors with run on sentences, sentence fragments, and general punctuation errors. In all honesty this wasn’t even something I noticed within my writing until taking on this challenge. I'm currently working on fixing these issues and becoming a better writer and I look forward to the progress I will make throughout the rest of the month.

My first week came with its own challenges, some of which really rocked me. However, it really doesn't compare to my second week within this challenge. As I progress closer to the end of this year my life continues to get busier and crazier each day. With the start of my new job, (a very fast paced and stressful job with long hours I might add) I have found myself having to utilize every free moment I have in order to get my writing done. Over the last week I have written 2 articles on my phone from the break room at work, and one racing against the clock to finish it before my laptop died. I have had to find creative ways to keep up with the commitment I made, while still remaining calm and cool throughout the process. However, although this last week has been more challenging than the first, I still believe I’ve managed to improve my writing skills. Going back and reading my first weeks articles compared to this week’s has shown improvement in both my grammar and punctuation. Improvement which I hope will continue to increase as I progress further through the month.

Overall this challenge has been enjoyable for me. As someone who loves to write and enjoys taking some time to myself to just think, It’s actually been an enjoyable experience. Not to mention that I truly do love a good challenge. Whenever life throws something unexpected at you and you manage to overcome that, it’s a great feeling. I’m still excited to continue writing each day and improve as I do. Overall this challenge has been a great experience so far, and one I would recommend trying yourself.

-Braden Schmidt 11-14-2019