English 1103 Final Reflection

Through the course of this semester, I have seen a great change in my writing views and process. At the beginning of this course, I had not been enrolled in an English class in a whole year. I was still formatting papers and planning them out as I did in high school. Over the past few months, I have been pushed away from that standard form of writing and have been able to become more individual. After looking back through my writing, comments I have received, daybook entries, I have seen my writing change drastically. I used to be so stuck in writing a certain format, paper after paper, like I had been taught. Now I feel I write more my own way, and I have grown to see that there is no set format. There are many assignments I have written this semester to display that change.

The first major assignment I took part in this semester was the Writing History Response. This assignment is a good reflection of how my writing used to look. As I began writing, I was sure that I was doing exactly what the assignment called for. I was writing a paper that was sure to get an ‘A’ from a past high school teacher. However, after receiving comments from Megan, I realized it was far from that. I had received a grade that I never in a million years would want to get on a writing assignment. I was doing something incorrect. A lot of Megan’s comments were based off the fact that “the assignment asks what you learned about yourself as a writer, not what you wrote”. Also, she challenged the format of my paper. She pointed out that I had a very basic introduction and thesis. She reminded me that the assignment did not call for this, and I was free to remove it if I did not see an overall benefit to my paper. Through revision, I decided to remove my introduction and just begin the paper with the next paragraph. The Writing History Response helped me to stray away from standard high school writing and forced me to better understand future assignments to make sure I fulfill all guidelines.

The next major assignment we were told to do was the Exploratory Essay. I believe this essay pushed me farther than any paper I have ever written. I began searching for a way to connect three of the articles we had read in class. It was a journey that I thought would never end. After reading and rereading, I came up with the idea that there was a clear distinction of teaching methods and social class; each had their own effect on the way the student behaves. I found examples, one of which I described in my Writing into the Day on March 18^th. After I was done writing, I again thought I had done a good job. When I work-shopped the first draft with the class, received overall good feedback. A few details were missing that could easily be put in. After receiving Megan’s comments on the second draft, I realized that a lot of my arguments were not clear. She informed me that my readers would easily be confused with what I was trying to say. After revising again, I realized that I need to plan more before I begin a paper. Instead of little brainstorming and hurrying through the assignment, I learned to put down all of my ideas in an outline before beginning.

To even further my planning process, Megan taught us a few techniques. One of the techniques we learned was the Dialogic Journal. In class, we did the dialogic journal for two of the sources for the Annotated Bibliography. I really enjoyed the way I was able to organize my information from the articles and how easy it made it to write the paper. I did the dialogic journal for all of the sources that I used.  I am really grateful that Megan shared this technique with us. I continued to use it through the semester, especially when writing the Joining the Conversation: Step One. The organization of quotes easily helped me piece them together in a conversation. This process has taught me how to outline and plan before I start writing so I can clearly get across to the reader what I am trying to say. This process also helped me see a new way of writing and to evolve from the high school format I was used to.

The Annotated Bibliography was our next big assignment. As we first began discussing it, I found myself really confused. Some class members said they have done an annotated bibliography before, but I had not. However, after it was fully explained and we had the chance to complete the dialogic journals, I was able to complete it much easier. I was nervous completing the first draft because I was not sure if I was doing it right. After workshopping, I was able to see how some of my group members took the assignment, and they helped me with information I had missed. After receiving the second draft with comments from Megan, I was still able to see where I had misunderstood how to analyze the articles, but there were also positive comments left. This made me feel accomplished when she pointed out my strong points. I learned that when you combine all of your efforts and work hard, you see progress in your writing and in your grade.

When we began discussing our inquiries, Megan allowed us to do many different exercises in class to get us thinking. Not all of them helped me, but a few of them really stuck out as I finally formed my inquiry question. One of the most helpful to me was the Writing into the Day on January 16^th which focused on our meaning of success in school. I wrote “Success is doing the absolute best you can and striving to reach the goals you have set for yourself. You have to stay involved in your work. Whether it is sports, clubs, or any other way to branch out from what you are used to. All of these are examples of ways that to contribute to success in school. When you are more involved in extracurricular activities, it brings a brighter outlook on school. It becomes more fun instead of a chore. For me, the motivation was theatre. Theatre was my reason to get up and go to school every day. I built friendships and study groups.” This assignment helped form my inquiry for the Joining the Conversation pieces.

The final major assignment for the semester was the Joining the Conversation project, which consisted of three pieces. Step One was a dialogue/play, which involved our inquiry. I chose to research the benefits of theatre education on elementary school students. I chose this because I have been highly involved in theatre my whole life. I was interested to discover things other than what I have personally experienced. The dialogue/play involved our five sources included in the Annotated Bibliography. The first draft was okay, but I felt like my conversation was not as clear as it could be. Step Two in this assignment was to turn the dialogue into an academic paper. Here again, I was resented with a typical assignment that I could have received in high school. However, I now knew that I did not have to stick to standard academic writing. I did not have to have an introduction, for example, I could just start writing. I saw a drastic change in my writing from the Writing History Response. After completing this step, I found better ways to make the information flow. I used this to revise Step One in a way that made the dialogue better to understand. I revised Step One into a five page paper, which was Joining the Conversation: Step Three. I found this to be much easier to complete after doing the academic paper. After receiving comments from Megan, I saw places that still needed improvement and made a lot of changes. I am proud of how much I revised Step Three and how much progress I have made.

Through this course, I have seen how this English class has made my writing so different and better than what it was previously. I am not able to properly organize information for my papers, and write more professionally. At first, I was dreading the assignments given. I see now the benefit it has had on my writing process and I will continue to use these techniques in my future education. I believe that Megan truly helped me break away from such a rigid format of writing. At first I was very unsure and had a hard time letting go, but when I did, I saw how much more personality and individuality I was able to put into my writing.