My transformation as a writer

This is two days late; I didn't know we had a blog due.  I don't expect to get credit, but I felt like I should finish it anyway.
I had the same English teacher for two straight years in high school.  He completely redefined writing for me, from something that I dreaded to something that I didn't quite hate, but I understood.  He helped me understand that each word of a sentence, its definition, connotation, and placement has an effect that can totally alter how an audience reacts to a work as a whole.  I gained a great respect for writers and writing, but I couldn't manage to comfortably use the techniques and style that I saw in other people's work.
I came to the University, managing to get by on the knowledge I had and an occasional use of an allusion here and a metaphor there.  Cue sophomore year.  I, deciding to transfer into the Business school, had to take this class.  What could I possibly learn?  The good grades I got in my English classes Freshman year were proof that my skills were adequate.  I didn't need another review of techniques that I knew already.  My first paper and blog came and went, and I wasn't doing as well in the class as I had assumed that I would.  Criticism on my papers was on things that I hadn't thought about in huge detail.  I realized something: It's always possible to get better at writing, and the only real way to do that is through experience and experimentation.  The only way to become comfortable with using certain styles, structures, and rhetorical  strategies is by using them.  This class probably has done the most for me in my writing skills by forcing me to do things that I didn't want or feel comfortable doing with my writing. More than just improving my writing skills, the class gave me the courage try new things.  Without taking this class, in ten years, my writing might have been the exact same caliber as it was last year, but with what I learned this year, I'll be able to adopt so many new things into my writing and become comfortable using them.
My first blog described how it was difficult for me to actually sit down and write.  It is normally a chore for me to start a paper; once the words were down on the page, I had much less trouble editing and making changes.  I still believe I have that problem - it took me about two hours to write the first half-page of my last paper - but I think that I am much more comfortable in my writing now.  My eraser would be worn down after the first page of an essay.  Every sentence would be rewritten until I understood my own tone and direction with a topic.  Now, however, ideas come easier after looking at techniques in detail and discussing their use in readings.  I have been much happier with my rough drafts this year than in the past.
This class has taught me to continue writing and to test my boundaries.  There is no way that I can get better without experimentation.

My rewrite - Ed and I

As of now, I feel like I want to rewrite my first essay, "Ed and I".  This topic probably was the one that I was most excited to write about at the start, but it did not come out at all like I had hoped.  I had so many things bouncing around my head, so many great ideas and examples to use, that the entire paper ended up like a mesh of memories with no overall purpose.  I am not satisfied with my work on this paper.
Ed changed me in a few ways.  First, he opened me up to the idea that there are people that I can have a healthy, beneficial friendship with from all different walks of life.  Living so close to potentially dangerous parts of Detroit for all my life, I originally thought that it would be hard to find commonalities between people who lived there and people who lived in Grosse Pointe, which was a completely kind of place.  Even though we tended to discuss things that I would never bring up in conversation with a coworker - gun ranges, drugs, crime, sex - I eventually found myself really enjoying his presence and learning from him in a positive way.  Learning from him was never something that I would have expected to do at the beginning of the summer.  Another way he changed me was by showing me that even people who look like the worst role models can have something to teach.  Meeting Ed and spending a majority of my time with him at work actually gave the "don't judge a book by its cover" cliche a real world example.  This is the influence on me that I wanted to get across in my paper, but it didn't show through clearly enough.
The piece by David Sedaris that we read in class before the paper was due really inspired me to focus on exmamples and show rather than tell the readers about the influence a character has.  I think I might have overdone my attempts at "showing", however, and included far to little to help my audience understand.  In my attempts to write a paper about Ed, I ended up just giving example after example, expecting the readers to understand my thought process.  In this revision, I really hope to make it clear how meeting Ed changed me, not just through examples of his surprising behavior, but through how it made me feel.