My view of writing before the term begun has always been the same which is I suck at writing. I hate writing my thoughts out on paper; I can speak but not write them. Also, I don’t like being given a prompt and it’s not thoroughly explained. Not all teachers/professors do that but there are some that will give the requirements of what they expect to see but don’t explain the prompt. For me to write a decent academic paper I need a little background information and then go from there. Another thing that helps me to write a paper is questions; questions are the best outline/guideline to get started on writing a paper. Even though I don’t like writing my thoughts down I tend to make an outline to help me construct a proper academic paper.
As the term progressed my views of writing significantly changed. Being enrolled in this course has shown me that there are more steps to writing than the ones taught in school. I realized when you’re writing a paper you have to consider the purpose and the audience. Another thing I realized that professor take into consideration is the grammar and mechanics. During my 8th grade year in middle school, we were still learning nouns and verbs because some students couldn’t get passed it. While going into high school they expected that you already learned grammar/mechanics. Also in high school teachers don’t discipline on these topics because they would understand what you were trying to say. So not actually learning grammar has affected me in this course, but I won’t let that stop me I just have to keep practicing.
During this term, I don’t think my writing was influenced by the work of any professional or student writer we read this term. I do believe my writing was influenced by the advice given from students and professionals. I honestly don’t think any of my writings are considered to be the best, but since I have to choose I would say the visual analysis essay. My only reason for choosing this essay is the fact that I had good ideas, my organization and content development, on the other hand, needed some major work. In my opinion, I feel as though if I really analyzed and not described what I saw and fixed my grammar/mechanic errors, my paper would have been a C paper at the most.
My weakest writing, hands down, was the diagnostic essay. I’m not ashamed that I miserably failed this essay. I simply didn’t understand how to construct the paper or how to get the information to be properly incorporated into my opinions. Hearing from my peers that they were confused and that they think they did the paper wrong made me feel a little better. The most difficult thing for me was taking the information given and trying to argue it. My strengths as a writer would be having ideas. I have a lot of ideas that I can talk about and write them down. When I write them down I can’t really go into great detail because I feel as though they need to be heard. As I go through life I’ll learn how to elaborate my ideas in writing. For an example, if I’m going to have my own business I’m going to need a business plan and a business plan is elaborated ideas. My weaknesses are organizing, content development, and grammar/mechanics. I learned in this course that all those components are necessary to achieve a decent academic paper. Knowing how to achieve each of those components will make a better paper. Even when I make an outline of how I want it and what order I want it in, I change it around because I doubt myself and think it is better in a different order.
I can’t say that I can fully trace my development as a writer in this term but I do know that I have improved from where I started coming into this course. I know my critical thinking skills can be better and become more creative when analyzing. Critical thinking skills are a job necessity in any industry so to have that skill can improve how your employer sees you as an employee. As a writer this term, what I learned about myself is that there is room for improvement. Before this term, I wish I knew how to properly analyze and have critical thinking skills. What I lacked before coming into this course shows how much I need to improve and that’s fine with me.
At the beginning of this term, I would have defined audience as who the piece would be directed towards, the purpose being defined as for why to why this piece is being written and defining voice as your opinion. Now that I been through this course I define them a little differently now. The audience is how you write your paper, the purpose is how you would construct a paper and voice would be how to elaborate your ideas and information. I don’t think this has really changed my view of the world, more so as to I don’t connect the world to literature or analyzing what I see really see. My view of others hasn’t changed I respect others opinions and perspectives even though may differ from mine. This class did change how I view myself because I came into this class thinking we were just going to write papers to pass the time but no, we actually had to major effort in this course and I wish I was harder on myself too so. If I had to do this class over I would definitely push myself to do more and try harder than I did this time around.
My view of science fiction didn’t really exist until this class. Before coming into this class I merely thought science fiction was about aliens and something going wrong in a science lab. After doing working on science fiction in this class I realized there’s more to than aliens and lab disasters. Also looking at the list of science fiction definitions on Ander’s list showed there are people who see science fiction as a completely different from one another. My view on film has changed drastically. When looking at films I didn’t think about why the director chose certain lighting or angled the camera a certain way, I just thought that it would be best for the movie in the process. Or I didn’t realize color had so much meaning and why it would be used throughout the movie. Now knowing that there’s a reason behind every color, lighting, angle, etc., I won’t look at films the same. I’ll probably say to myself I wonder what the meaning behind this scene was or why the director did choose this angle. The most important lesson that I learned that I learned as a result of this course is that critical thinking is very important and so is analyzing. You can’t go through just summarizing or speak on ideas without elaborating what you’re trying to get someone to understand.
Sherrell's Page 