Typology Essay

I have always loved reading and writing; from Oh, the Places You’ll Go to Crime and Punishment, I have always come away from literature with more knowledge and more drive to expand my own writing. And as the years progressed, I have been able to narrow in and focus on the kind of writing I enjoy the most; yet it is no coincidence that the writing I enjoy the most also receives the best grades.

The Jung Typology Test results, paired with the reading and writing style descriptions from the course anthology, defined my writing preferences very accurately; though I prefer the absence of regulation and the privilege of emotional flexibility in my writing, I excel in assignments like historical research papers in which a grading rubric is clearly defined. I love to pack in names and dates and allusions into what I write because I believe it helps me and the reader better grasp the image of what I’m trying to present. Because my personality relies on sensing over intuition, the concrete observation and use of factual information helps me present more plainly the image I try to convey to my audience (138). In my eyes the image, potentially the overall message, is of utmost importance. The emphasis I place on the clear representation of my subject is one reason I aim to actively experience the topic that I am presenting, one of the properties of extraversion in writing (136). During the fall semester of my senior year in high school, I wrote a term paper on American Muslims and racial discrimination. To prepare for my task, I attended mosque on Fridays for several weeks and interviewed members of Masjid al-Jamia’s fellowship. The interaction I had with the people there and the immersion into a society different than my own helped me finalize my topic and hammer my thoughts into unity.

Though extraversion is often my greatest strength when I write, it certainly has its pitfalls. While “extroverts will think better when writing quickly, impulsively, and uncritically,” (136) freethinking can be hazardous during the construction of a long research paper. Often I find myself staring at the computer screen begging my thoughts to unite in my brain so that I can clearly express them on the written page. Even as I write now, I find myself writing on impulse and emotion rather than relying on a structured rubric, in which I must stop and scrutinize my writing often, making sure the requirements of the assignment are fulfilled.

When I write I strive to fill my paragraphs with descriptions and literary devices that enable the reader and I to really connect to my topic. According to the course anthology, emotional writing helps the author make contact with the reader, and often conveys a “deep personal conviction” (141). The semester I spent actively studying Islam in Texas made me extremely passionate about the unfair plight of Muslim Americans combating racial prejudice. I believe I did so well on the paper because I combined my strong work ethic – in that I stuck to a plan and avoided procrastination – with my own personal feelings, which came about through my active experiences in the Fort Worth Muslim community, and factual information about Islam which supported my argument. Using this term paper as an example, I see that my writing reaches its peak when I combine the various aspects of writing that my personality fits best, as determined by the typology test.