6. Final Reflection

Final Reflection

In my writing career, before taking Writing 101, could be described as being strict and not flexible. Instead of putting my personality in a piece I would just write with no feeling, basically just to finish the work. In many ways my work has grown through the course of this class. I have become more passionate and I now put more feeling into what I write. Before I found writing to be a challenge and a task, but now I enjoy sharing my thoughts and opinions through writing. On the first formal paper, Why The River?, I enjoyed describing the meaning behind the painting of the young girl in the river. This project was interesting for me and kept my interest, making me what to explore deeper into myself and into the painting. On the second formal paper, Dancing Leads to Kissing, I compared Degas's Dancers to Klimt's The Kiss. This was my least favorite project but was not really bad considering I found all the projects to be interesting and enjoyable. I did like that I was able to challenge myself to explore different types of writing, such as this comparative essay. My favorite formal essay was the last, my critique on a Drew and Ellie Holcomb concert I attended recently. I loved the ability to put my own thoughts and opinion into a piece. Not only did I enjoy that aspect, I really got to re-appreciate the performance itself by reliving the event over again by writing about it and all the positive aspects about it. Again these papers really helped develop me as a writer because it gave be the freedom to explore the new areas of writing that were completely new for me.

I found most of our readings to be dry and some were difficult to read, but Neat People vs. Sloppy People and An Occurrence At Owl Creek were two very interesting readings. I thought Neat People vs. Sloppy People was very comical, thought provoking, extreme, and easy read. An Occurrence At Owl Creek was an intense and smooth read. It was also nice to have videos that went along with the story to see many perspectives. As for the discussion posts, I would have much rather have a class discussion, which would have been more interesting and would have opened the class up more to speaking up. I really enjoyed doing the free writes, it worked as a warm up for the brain in the morning. Although I understand how important and necessary it is to have individual presentations, I am not a fan of them. I find them to be stressful and again, would much have a informal class discussion on the assigned topic.

I first chose to put in The second formal paper, not only because it was required but because it shows how I have grown as a writer. This was the most difficult paper for me to write and forced me to face challenges of comparing and contrasting two pieces that I have never studied before. Next, I chose to put in the third formal paper, the critique of the performance because it was the paper I enjoyed writing the most and the paper that I put all of myself into. For the discussion response I decided to include the response for “What makes you who you are?” because I think it is important to understand the writer when reading their work and this response represents this opinion well. I included a free write that describes my thought process when taking the first steps of writing an essay. This free write describes how many students view the first steps as being a challenge.

Before entering the class, I was expecting it to be a very high stress class, that I would probably be spending a lot of time each night trying to keep up with all the work. Although, it was a good amount of work, I never found this class to be very stressful. I actually saw this class as being relaxed and easy-going. Overall I have enjoyed my time spent learning new techniques for my writing and experiencing new concepts to writing. To sum it up, this course was a lot better than my expectations.