Outlining

Throughout my life, I haven't used outlining in my writing very much. I've always had a sort of outline or idea of what I was going to write in my head, but I didn't written it down on paper. At the beginning of the semester I was almost against outlining. While I knew that it was a reliable technique and that it worked well for some people, I was convinced that it wasn't for me. As the semester progressed however, I have realized that outlining can be very helpful. This was especially helpful to me during my research paper. I wrote down each section of my paper and essentially what I wanted to say in each section. This helped me to get all of my thoughts down on paper so that I didn't have to worry about remembering them. Once I had an outline I was able to be much more productive. More importantly, I knew what direction I wanted my paper to go and had already organized and arranged it in the way I wanted.