In this essay I discuss my development throughout English 110 as well as the fun I’ve had during the course!!
Starting this semester out, Professor Harrison, gave us a challenging essay to get our creative juices flowing. She introduced a subject to me that I never put any thought into before our essay. She introduced me to our Language and Literacy essay, in this assignment, she challenged the class to speak on how language and/or literacy has affected our lives. At first this essay seemed like a piece of cake, I soon figured out that it was not. I pondered for several days, trying to think of something that I could write about, it was suddenly a strangely difficult task. To start this term off right, I had to write a great essay right off the bat, so I challenged myself to speak on something that I don’t tend to speak about. I wrote about the language barrier between my family and I, it is something that has affected me my whole life, but I never wrote down or spoke on how I felt about. Truth be told this was an eye-opening essay for me, it enabled me to vent and talk about how I felt about a personal matter, while fulfilling the subject matter for my essay. This essay broadened my vision a lot pertaining to language and literacy and its affect on our lives. I never gave the relationship of dialogue between my father and I any thought, I always thought we were just different people who didn’t see eye to eye all the time. But as I searched deeper it became clearer that because we didn’t speak the same language it created distance between us and a barrier, his language background also contributed to our different ideologies and beliefs. This was an awesome essay to write because it gave some closure and helped develop me as a writer.
For phase 2, Professor Harrison raised the bar even higher. Our next assignment was a Rhetorical Analysis essay, this was the essay I struggled the most with by far! It took a while to grasp the real meaning of what it meant to rhetorically analyze something. I didn’t quite get it for a while, in class the activities were quite easy when it came to pictures and signs. However, when it came to analyzing a book or a text, it was a difficult job for me. I blindly submitted a “shitty first draft” as we often talked about it in class. Professor Harrison never failed to mention that it’s okay to write a bad first draft and this stuck to me for more than purposes of writing. In my everyday life, I tend to be a perfectionist and when things don’t go the right way, according to my brain, I get upset. I don’t throw tantrums or anything excessive like that, but my mood does change, or I look at things in a distasteful way. So, having the repeated message of “It’s okay for things to not be perfect, we can always come back to it and make it better!” made things better for myself and that stuck to me. It allowed me to make mistakes and take things better than how I normally would. It allowed my writing to get better as well, helping me take criticism better instead of getting upset with myself, which led to better editing and feeling better about my writing. This was crucial for the rhetorical analysis essay, after blindly sending in my draft I was able to adjust accordingly. This allowed me to write a better essay and further understand rhetorical analysis. Before I had a miniscule understanding and in my writing, it showed that, I didn’t know how to explain certain things and it was hard for me to show how the author used different things to prove a point. This was by far the most difficult writing task that was assigned to us but maybe the educational one to do.
As we were nearing the end of our class year together, Professor Harrison assigned us a research essay. This one had me stumped in the beginning as well, I had a hard time choosing something to write my essay on. It was a mix up between a couple of other things, but I ended up choosing creatine. This was a fun essay to write, even though it was super long, it was an informational essay to write which was awesome. It was also cool to share a passion of mine with the class when we were giving presentations, and have people look interested and ask me questions about it. That made me super happy, and I was thinking about it all day. To get back to the essay, I enjoyed writing this essay a ton. It helped me broaden my understanding of what creatine is and the affects it has on the human body. It was especially cool to me because it’s a supplement that I’m taking now, and I was rather uneducated about it before. I feel like it put me in a position to inform other people about it outside the classroom in case somebody sees me taking it and has questions I would be ready and able to answer them. Writing this essay taught me how to be a better researcher, it helped me cite better and pushed me to look at more reliable articles and websites. It helped me sharpen a tool of mine that will be used constantly throughout the future, in my later years in college I must be able to do research and do it well. Besides this essay being 7 pages long, it was a great essay to write, it was informational and at the end of it I became a better writer, researcher, and even a better lifter!
To wrap things up, this was a fantastic year all throughout, this was by far my favorite class that I’m taking. It was also one, that I learned a lot in, whether it was something in the class or about myself. It helped me become a better writer, a better critic and more importantly a better student. It was an extraordinary time coming into a lively class where there was lots of energy and enthusiasm, especially when I didn’t have it. It made me have a better day and made me remind myself to be in a good mood, which is something I absolutely loved about this class. I also loved Professor Harrison’s energy and the way she conducted this class! She was always lenient and understanding which was nice, and having a younger understanding professor was so relieving.
