Introduction
The term personal growth is, essentially, about two things: finding and knowing ourselves. This project has made me take a look at not only who I am as a writer, but who I have been and who I can become. While the phrase ‘personal growth’ is usually taken as a whole, it seems that the two components can be taken separately.

Personal
Writing is, first and foremost, a personal issue. With me, it boils down to this. My words work on two very separate levels: emotional and logical. I’ve always been in touch with the emotional outlet of verse. Since I was young, I’ve used words as a means of purging my discomfort or annoyance, and alternately, my joy and surprise. It’s always been easier for me to feel something naturally than to think through it.

I’ve struggled with the logical part a bit more. And when I say struggled, I mean it. It’s really been a fight. Pounding out three essays a week over the course of a semester is not my thing. I hate forcing myself to write, and often, my academic writing has been boring because I wasn’t sure how to take chances within certain boundaries. Knowing all of this about myself, I’ve still grappled with finding a personality in my words. I know who I am, but how did I become this person?

Growth
That’s where the growth comes in. Development and learning are both huge components in writing. It takes you places, sweeps you up in its charm, and often times, it leaves you bare. To me, writing is scarier than the vast unknowns of science. They, at least, are fixed. Writing is constant movement. As I said in an earlier essay, you can’t stand still in writing. You have to evolve, or you lose something of yourself. If your words grow stale, or you lose your voice, you have to strain to find it again. Rediscovering is almost more painful than losing in the first place. It’s a deeply personal engagement, if you will, and I’ve devoted my life to it.

As we experience life, we experience writing in new ways. I know it’s a cliché, but writing, in much the same way as life, is a journey. I’ve transitioned from playwright to poet, and finally entered into the world of academia. And what I’ve learned over the course of this precarious walk is that I can be an academic writer. It’s only a matter of removing the emotion without sacrificing style. It isn’t an easy task, but writing rarely is.