Final Reflection

Looking back on my semester in ENC 2135 it is clear that it wasn't the easiest or smoothest path to where I am now. I never really cared for English or language arts classes. Despite my love for reading, I often felt disinterested and disengaged from the learning in the classroom. I like to consider myself a decent writer, so I was usually able to pass with little effort, never really feeling challenged. This course was as expected much different. Although some AP teachers will claim otherwise, AP courses are nowhere close to being similar to college coursework. This class moved much more quickly than I was used to, and deadlines and due dates always seemed to sneak up on me. Now, I feel like I am in much more control and understand what the goals of this course and its' three projects are. I missed the mark almost immediately, but Mat was able to help me in our first conference understand that I was to write a personal narrative, not a high school standard essay. I felt like I was all over the place trying to write that paper but I eventually was able to construct something I could accept. Getting a C was kind of startling even though I knew it wasn't my absolute best work. I realized I would have to put more effort in this class if I were to get the grade that I wanted in this class. Mat gave me useful feedback and suggested that I reorder my paragraphs so that my paper was more easily understood and flowed smoothly.

Project 2 was cloudy for me for way too long. I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but the execution did not go over well. I tried to salvage it, but by the time the project was finished, it was riddled with problems stemming from a lack of citations, formatting, and below my standard writing. Meeting and emailing with Mat made me finally get over the idea that I had to present the community of Tallahassee as a positive despite the negatives. After that, it was much easier to present a message. Shifting from Tallahassee being great, to it being very confusing and complicated made my project seem a million times more coherent and from there I was able to turn the train wreck into what I think to be some of my better writing on a subject I was passionate and interested in.

Project 3 was not difficult after I was able to form a clear message in project 2, and finding genres took me some time, but I feel like I arrived at a good place. I haven't met with Mat after creating my genres, but his positive comments after my pitch in class gave me confidence to go through with my ideas. Sucking up my failure and working with Mat was the real turning point for me this semester I feel like. From then on, I forced myself to dedicate more of my time to the class, and was more careful to follow guidelines and put more effort into understanding the goals of the projects and what I should accomplish in my work.

I can't say that I loved this course. I truly did like Mat, and the time in class was fine, but the topic is just not interesting to me. I hated learning about literary genres and I always felt so detached when we were doing anything regarding the textbook or genres. On the other side, I really came to love the projects. The backbone of the class, the projects were great for me because I was able to find a topic that was really close to me and an important part of my life. I was passionate about writing and I feel like this course was overall useful to me though I didn't like it at times. I can say that the skills I gained pertaining to research and composing non-traditional genres of writing will likely be useful to me after this course. I know its cliche but I did learn some life lessons and college struck me fast, especially this course. I had to be flexible, make some changes in my habits, and own up to my failures and work my way to (hopefully an A) success. I wish more class time went toward the projects as sometimes I felt in the dark, but that is just my personal input, and I feel that I could have benefited from it and realized some of my issues a little bit sooner.