How Writing Has Helped Me Learn

How writing helped you learn in your life?

Writing has helped me learn in a variety of ways. Oftentimes, writing acted as a key that was able to unlock further learning; through my writing, I was able to understand topics more comprehensively, thus allowing me to read further. Writing increased my literacy and taught me about what types of writing I liked to read, thus exposing me to a greater selection of books. Writing essays and applications helped me get accepted to extracurricular learning opportunities, advanced classes, and even college.

Writing has also helped me learn a lot about myself, things that I think would have otherwise been left concealed. As I was describing earlier, writing is the most reflexive type of communication, and this aspect of writing is not one that can be replicated orally. Writing is one of the only forms of communication in which the actor and receiver of the communication can be one in the same. Sure, you could just speak to yourself out loud, but this is a peculiar behavior and has not historically been employed in the same therapeutic way that writing has. In writing, however, you can have what feels like a completely internal dialogue but also has the physical manifestation of writing. With physical writing you can write to yourself, you can write for yourself, you can simply just write yourself in a way that you cannot through speaking. In this way, writing gives the author the opportunity to learn about themselves things that they could not otherwise have come to know through different forms of communication.