My Underdevelopment

After I enrolled in college, I made nonfiction writing my first course choice. But juggling two languages became an issue as soon as I started writing essays. When we did peer review in my writing seminar, I received mostly grammar and spelling corrections. While other students in my class were developing their style, I was busy trying to make my writing clear. I started using writing manuals and drastically simplifying my ideas. Expressing myself in English and receiving feedback on my writing clarified a realization I’d had in Puerto Rico: in English, I was an average writer.