Overall, I really enjoyed this course. I like English classes and writing to begin with, so I wasn’t really worried about it before hand. I think that the group of students in a classroom can make or break the class experience, and I definitely enjoyed ours. I felt as if the students worked well together and made class interesting through participating in different discussions. Sometimes I felt as if the readings we discussed didn’t always relate to what we were learning, but I usually enjoyed the discussions anyway.
I really liked learning about different styles of rhetoric and ways writers make their writing interesting, unique, and effective. I think what I most benefitted from through the course was exploring different ways of setting up an essay, other than the traditional 5 paragraph. I really enjoyed writing in open as opposed to closed from and seeing how it can be effective in different situations. It was initially hard to get out of the habit of writing introduction, thesis, body, conclusion, but when I did I found my writing actually flowed more and made more sense…instead of trying to fit it into an exact format all the time.
I also really liked the peer editing workshops. Sometimes though it was hard to stay focused and care about someone else’s paper. I think this could be done better if we had a sheet with specific things to look out for like we did for our final paper…that helped a lot because we had a specific reason to read and edit the paper.
Although other people didn’t like them, I liked writing blogs! I thought it was a good way to stay focused in a class that we only have twice a week and to keep up with writing regularly. I don’t mind taking time to write out a blog because I like how free the assignments were…not looking for an exact answer, just writing what you want.
Finally, the final paper was hard! I didn’t think it would be as hard as it was to incorporate so much research into a paper and have it still flow and make sense. Learning to incorporate research to defend your point rather than just plop quotes down was difficult. Writing the paper was definitely time consuming, but I enjoyed being able to pick a topic that interested me and was relevant to my personal life. I also enjoyed the presentations, both listening and giving them. I incorporated questions people asked in my presentation in my paper and think that just saying my information out loud helped me organize my actual paper.
Overall, thank you for such a great experience in the class, I really enjoyed it!!
