Final Reflection
At the beginning of this class, I wasn’t sure what I was going to get out of it, I thought of myself as already being a pretty good writer and I thought that all we were going to do was write essays and then receive feedback on how we can make them better, but this was not the case. I realized within the first few classes that you were not very interested in whether we could construct an argument and gather research to make our points, but instead you seemed more interested in creativity and teaching us what it meant to compose something. I felt like you wanted to show us that whether it be an essay, poem, article, blog or even a drawing, our work should have something important to say and should reflect who we are as a person and what we believe. When we started going through different mentor texts and almost all of them were different forms of composition, I started to realize that there are many other ways to express yourself and your ideas than just writing an essay. In fact, there are many other forms of composition that better impact the reader or observer and can therefore get one’s point across better.
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I liked how we talked a lot in class and did group work, I feel like I got to know a lot of people in class because of that. You were always in a good mood and seemed like you enjoyed being in class with us, you were really funny and made class feel casual which made me feel more comfortable. I also felt like you wanted to get to know us and you wanted us to know you, none of my other professors shared a lot of personal information like you did and I feel like it made our class closer to one another. Also, lots of our short writing assignments as well as our projects were very personal which forced us to open up to each other and ourselves. I had never written about personal stuff like that before, I never kept a diary or journal or anything, so writing about a place I felt heard and spoken to was new for me. I feel like this class took my writing skills and used them for something new, addressing social issues through our mentor texts and expressing myself through the 3 part project of Where I’m from, Where I am, and Where I’m going. I really enjoyed this project because I got to reflect on who I am and what happened in the past that made me who I am today as well as who I think I will become in the future. I have always wanted to do a project like that because I enjoy contemplating why I am the way I am and what is in store for the rest of my life. I also thought it was cool how we compared it to a larger mission that we wanted to achieve, something that is bigger than us.
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Doing my final campaign was probably my favorite part of the course. I felt like it really had me thinking about an issue I have encountered in my life and how I could possibly fix it or make it better. The transition into college for me was pretty difficult, there was a lot going on first semester with my roommate, rushing a fraternity, and my ex-girlfriend, so dealing with all of that plus the big change of being on my own for the first time was a lot. I felt that I could have used the wisdom of an elder at the time but I was not searching for it, I was just trying to handle things on my own. This inspired my idea for my final campaign.
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Overall, I had a great semester in your class, though it was sometimes hard for me to wake up before 8am sometimes, going to class was always enjoyable. You kept it interesting by having us draw things on our notecards, cracking jokes and making fun of yourself all the time. I think you’re a great teacher and I learned a lot about the nature of composition as well as the importance it holds.