Overall Reflection

When we were first given the personal narrative assignment, I wasn’t sure where to start, so for the first draft, I tried to implement the ideas that were presented in the “Shitty First Draft” assignment we had to read prior to the personal narrative. It turned out following the plan to write without a plan, worked out well as I was able to speak my mind without really having to think too hard on the delivery of every idea, just like a free write. On the second draft I would simply have to enhances the sentences and refine the word choice. However, I think I might have gotten a little to carried away and introduced new ideas that weren’t truly necessary to the advancement of my narrative. I was worried I had diverged from the main idea and focused too much on ideas meant to be briefly discussed and left alone. My conference with Matt would confirm that, but also explain to me why having an excess of unnecessary focal points would make my writing less effective. Taking that in mind as well as other words of advice from him, I started on my final draft which i definitely think was a more polishedd and effective narrative. The second project we were assigned was honestly really confusing to me, although it was actually prettY useful becausee it forced me to really get out of my dorm, somwthing I wasn’t doing much. I feel like the instructions were hard to follow, but at the same time I was just looking way too deep into it and overthinking something that shouldn’t have been as stressful as I made it. I also did end up getting in contact with more members of my community after the project, and they recently messaged me with the information to sign up this coming fall. I also learned how to better my approach to a research topic, mostly jn how to present the information. My project two was reaally awkward in format and I feel I’ll do much etter on the next research paper im assigned. The final campaign was the simplest project and I actually found doing it to be enjoyable. Making a podcast and social media, acting like I was really a host of an ongoing program was really interesting. I could just talk about my experience with the project two and even add my own music to it to make it my own. It also gave me a bit more insight on genres, in addition to the rest of the things we learned. The presentations also helped with my familiarity with the subject, while also being pretty entertaining watching the completely different interests that people had. I learned that people love crime and murder mysteries A LOT, which I can watch occasionally but their fascination with it was almost worrysome at times. Overall though, I think the class taught me a lot about genres and texts, and podcasts, while also breaking me from the really repetitive, formulaic kind of high school writing I was used to. It forced me to get out of my comfort zone, quite literally, when I had to walk(and sometimes run)about 24 minutes every morning at 7:35 from my residence hall, which was over a mile away. I realized later that I had to leave earlier because I was getting to class late all the time. I found out how to build a website which I had never done before in my life, but turned out incredibly simple. I learned that there are no water fountains, and if there are theyre hidden somewhere. I found out that signing uo for classes is something you should be cautious with, so that you have time in between classess to walk or take a break. I failed with that the first time, checking out a 9:30 class when my enc 2135 class ended at 9:30. I lived for the days we were able to leave earlier than 9:25. I learned that despite the rule of three or more absences, people don’t come. When it comes to the whole semester though, this class has been super useful to me, its been stressful at times and I questioned the worth of a degree(though that might have been due to personal reasons), and its always been an engaging class I never got bored of.