me too. writing concisely has helped me throughout my career, but that wasn't always the case. i undervalued writing growing up and slowly fell behind my peers. that finally caught up to me in college where i struggled to distill and express the often conflicting ideas squirming around in my head.

but a love of novel ideas led me to take extra liberal arts courses, accept the resultant mediocre grades, and ultimately improve my writing. becoming a teaching assistant for an engineering writing class was where, in comparison with my younger peers, i could finally see that i'd indeed improved (and hopeful that the poor writing i graded wasn't indicative of future skill!).