W131- The Semester Reflection
When I added the English W131 to my class schedule, it elicited several emotions in me: anxiety, wonder, excitement, irritation. I hadn't taken an English class since my last year of high school and I was hoping to keep it that way. College-level courses always prove to be much more challenging when compared to those taken in high school, which made me very nervous about what this class would mean for me. Not only was I worried about the class itself, but now I couldn't help but think of what it'd be like to take it in a completely online format due to COVID-19.
As the semester began and slowly progressed, I began to realize how much I had to learn as a writer. English had always been an area I excelled in and presented little challenge most of the time. But that immediately changed. The syllabus alone had shown me the depths of the class and it was like no other course I had taken before.
Though it had presented me with a challenge, I was able to meet several course goals through the three main writing assignments given to us. As displayed in the syllabus for the class, these course goals were to:
-
Discover, explore, and analyze ideas in order to write with a strong sense of ownership
-
Participate productively in online and conference discussions about writing
-
Create a clear focus or strong thesis and provide sufficient support
-
Use sources effectively by synthesizing ideas, integrating them smoothly, and documenting them correctly
-
Learn to read with greater confidence
-
Learn to reflect on writing practices to improve them
-
Shape, revise, and edit writing to meet the concerns of purpose and audience
Each assignment had its own purpose and set of skills that were required of me, some of which I had never exercised before. And each assignment allowed me to meet every listed course goal above through thoughtful writing and an array of reading assignments. As I tackled each individual project, I brought my own knowledge to the table but was able to gain a broader and much deeper understanding that had come from working on them. One example of this is from one of the very first assignments given, and that was to read Arts of the Contact Zone by Mary Pratt. This, among several other reading assignments, was a task that went beyond just reading. We were asked to pick apart Pratt's article and understand what she wanted to convey, how she used certain writing strategies, and what is it that we would take away and use for our own personal projects.
The first writing project conquered was a film review. The goal was to find a documentary related to our immersion experience (which will be explained later). This assignment was something I had never done in an English class before, and my first thought was, "What could writing a film review teach me?" My first instinct was to come up with something similar to the ones all over the internet from hundreds of movies I had seen in the past. But our professor had another idea in mind. This film review wouldn't be solely based on opinion, but rather on our comprehension of the documentary and how it related to our own immersion choice. We were to find other reviews that expressed the success of the film and even other sources that tied together ideas from the film. This was one of the first examples of how our professor had gone past the normal level of an assignment and encouraged us to think deeper and more creatively. We had also begun to do assignments that involved us making and sharing our own work with our peers, which immediately helped me to meet the goal of productively participating in online discussions about writing through engaging with my peers and being able to see how those around me were interpreting the projects.
The second writing project, which was the article about my immersion experience, is where I really was able to spread my creative writing wings. This project called for two parts: the actual, physical immersion experience and then our record of it through a written essay. This particular assignment proved to be another task that I hadn't encountered before. We were to choose an activity that was completely new to us or to revisit one. I chose to practice yoga over a 2 week period, and though it was something I was familiar with, I was never asked to understand it on the level at which we were told to do it. It was more than just doing something because it was fun. But what was I to gain from this experience? And how could I integrate those findings into a feature style narrative? This assignment is where I tackled the course goal of shaping, revising, and editing writing. As one of the revised projects to be scored in this ePortfolio, I really took the time to dig deep into my experience and share my journey with readers. As I had the film review under my belt, I was able to use those same writing skills I had developed and adapted to in order to perfect it. I was also able to successfully use sources to smoothly combine my own ideas and those of the experts that I was citing. During the time I was writing this piece, we had been advised to read many other articles. They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals by Daniel Berehulak and My Terrifying Night With Afghanistan's Only Female Warlord by Jennifer Percy were two that stuck out to me the most. These articles were the foundation of what helped me to shape and create my own immersion experience essay, as I wanted it to mirror the unique way that they were each written. Here, I learned how to take these ideas and techniques found in other writing to help construct my own.
Mary Pratt's Arts of the Contact Zone Article
Jennifer Percy's Article
The third and final project we were to complete was the multi-modal essay, which delved into the facets of this very website and how I was able to make it into what it is now. This project had to be among the most challenging of the assignments, as I wasn't sure how to effectively talk about my process in creating this website. Though it was very difficult, by this time I had now written a film review and physically participated in and created a narrative on an immersion experience about yoga. I was able to look back on how I started both projects, the way I prepared for them, wrote them, revised them, and finalized them. What I learned from these assignments, helped me to understand how I needed to go about writing this one. A course goal that shined through during this project was to discover, explore, and analyze ideas in order to write with a strong sense of ownership. This assignment gave me the tools to be confident in my own decisions about the website, including the colors I used, the fonts I picked, and all the way down to the layouts for each tab.
As I am now able to look back and reflect over this course and the semester, I can proudly say that I am a better and more confident writer. Though the challenge was great, I was able to learn from it and am now equipped with new knowledge I have gained to go on in my future endeavors. Some people are born good writers. I am among the lucky to have been made into one through courses such as this. What I have been taught is priceless, what I have learned I will always carry with me.