Reflective Evaluation.

Dear Wendy,

Over the course of this semester, I feel that I have grown and learned so much as a writer. When I came into this class as a twenty year old freshman I was a little nervous about what to expect and what being in school again would be like. Honestly, I was primarily nervous about being in and English class because I don’t like group discussions or talking in front of people that I don’t know; but because of your methods of teaching I really began to feel at ease about it all as the semester went on. I have always been a big reader and I enjoy reading in my spare time but I have never, until now, enjoyed assigned reading. I understood each essay we were required to read and found myself identifying the central themes and arguments much easier than I had assumed that I would. Each assigned essay I found that the one’s that stuck out to me the most and chose to write about in each individual essay’s were the ones with the themes of silence, childhood, growing up, and abuse. Silence and growing up are the operative themes of my Textual Analysis, “In The Fourth of July, by Audre Lorde, the main themes are silence and the idea of not being a child anymore.” (Textual Analysis Essay, Page 1). “In the three essays The Rake: A few scenes from my childhood by David Mamet, Under the Influence by Scott Russell Sanders, and The Limit by Christian Wiman the operative relations between each individual essay are abuse (whether it physical, mental, sexual, or self-inflicted), silence, growing up, and family.” (Synthesis Essay, Page 1). In my Reader Response Essay, the theme that I chose was that of a rough childhood, “In The Rake by David Mamet, the main focus is his rough childhood.” (Reader Response Essay, Page 1).

Not only were we assigned specific essays that were required, but we were also given the freedom to choose what we write about in our blogs. Necessary blog writing helped me to open up and actually share my writing with the rest of the class. I understand that the reason behind having these blogs is to help us engage in one another’s writing an open up a platform for constructive criticism, which I always welcome. I feel that with each draft we were required to write, revise, and complete, that I found out a little bit more about myself as a writer and as a student. I discovered my own writing style and can easily determine what it is that I am trying to accomplish on my own.

When it comes to the questions “how does the language that the writers chose make meaning?” and “why does this matter?”, I wasn’t quite sure how to successfully answer those questions when I was first told that we should keep them in mind when reading assigned essays, as well as when we were doing writing assignments of our own. Now that the semester is over I feel that I can effectively answer both questions accurately and thoroughly. I found myself asking these questions in my head as I read and wrote throughout this semester. My writing and reading skills, in my opinion, were already pretty tactful, but as I was writing each essay, blog, or response I found that I had more flaws in how I chose to go about writing than I thought; but because of the essays that we were exposed to and mandatory to write, I found that I resolved most of these problems and furthered my writing knowledge to a great extent. Peer response is another thing that I’m not really a big fan of due to the fact that I don’t like getting into small groups and having people read and respond to my work to my face, that’s why I preferred the blog method instead. But over time I realized that it made me a stronger writer and made me strive to really make my essays make ends meet and strengthen how I explained and interpreted my themes. Overall the class was a positive experience for me. I feel that I am leaving the course with a new appreciation for each topic, author, and assignment we covered.

-EJ