I think that the reason for all the different type of things that we did in class, such as the readings, discussions and writing exercises, were to not only benefit our writing, but to expand our minds. We wrote about a lot of things that you don’t normally think of to write about. Such as writing about how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is not your normal writing assignment.
I do see a difference in my writing from the beginning of the semester. I feel like finding my “voice” has helped me become more confident as a writer and has made me not as shy about sharing my work. I even entered a piece into The Angle this semester, and I would have never thought about previously. The groups that we had for the semester really helped me because I became comfortable with those people and I was able to go to them with questions and not feel stupid. I was able to share with them my writing easily and let them read it or have me read it aloud. It was when we had to start sharing with new people that the feeling of insecurity started to come back to me. I’m always afraid that people are going to laugh at my writing and think that I am not a good writer.
My favorite reading of the whole semester was the Diana Hume-George piece (On Seat Belts, Cocaine Addiction, and the Theory of Germ Disease). I thought that was the best piece to read, and I believe that was one of the pieces that we started out with. I likes the little exercises that we did in class – where you would just have us write for about 15/20 minutes about some totally random thing. The one that sticks out in my mind right now is the one where we had to take the point of view of either the cat or the dog. I think that those kind of exercises really get the creative juices flowing. Then afterwards I liked listening to other people’s writings because sometimes it gave me a good idea of what I needed to expand more on or what I had not even began to touch in my piece. I definitely was able to think outside of the box in this class.
My favorite essay that we had to write this semester was a tough one to choose. I liked our patchwork quilt essay and I also really liked the Advertisement Analysis essay. Even though I normally dread doing analysis essays, I liked this one because it dealt with my major and what I hope to go into for a career someday. I would like to say that for my product that I choose, I could not find any consumer reports. I spent most of the day looking. But I still thought that it was a great way to get into something that you normally don’t think about being writing material.
My least favorite assignment this semester was the comparing and contrasting of two stories. I usually don’t have a problem with doing this type of essay, but for some reason it was causing me problems this time and I could not get what I wanted to say out in the words that I needed to say them in.
Overall this semester, even though it was a very tough semester for me personally, I enjoyed this class a lot and I feel as if I have learned a lot of great things that will help me with my writing in the future.
