Writer’s Reflection
In general, I found that the lessons I’ve learned in this writing course vary greatly, though all are important. I have learned how to utilize the cultural, and especially linguistic, differences between myself and my colleagues, as they offer perspectives and advice I would not have otherwise considered. I have improved my writing on all fronts, as the examples above illustrate. I have formulated clear writing goals, that in the future I will seek out the types of writing on topics I truly care about. For who reads them, I can only assume that my audience is as broad as possible, with my idiosyncratic styles pulling in people of all different kinds. I understand rhetorical situation, defined by the conditions of the speaker, audience and any language based parameters set up to mold the situation; tone and purpose, how someone’s writing sounds through words and what the reason is for their writing; genre, the type of writing one employs(Op-Ed, letter, story); and stance, the opinion one has on a certain issue, person, etc. I have collaborated with my classmates in every peer review. In my visual essay project, I learned how to format and frame images to draw in one’s attention. In the same essay, I pulled images from the CCNY database, which I can now navigate fairly easily. As this essay shows, I can summarize the actions of an entire semester now in a matter of sentences, and as the digital portfolio shows, I can clearly design on the same level.
In this English class, I have grown as a writer a great deal. Throughout the assigned materials, from Opinion Editorial to the Creative Choice final, I’ve had to adapt to ever changing circumstances in not only how I write, but how I think about writing. This can be seen in numerous ways, many of which I will go over in the following text, that range from knowing how to pace my writing, utilizing certain language and reading for research. Overall, these separate lessons I’ve learned, among others, have built me into a much more fine tuned and effective writer, with prose that I hope compels anyone to continue reading.
The first instance, on how to pace myself, can be seen in the submission times of many of my pieces, which are often fairly in advance of the designated due date. If not, I can assure one that they were mostly written far in advance, and simply submitted later on. Why is this? Over the course of the semester, I developed a tendency to write in whole, single blocks an entire work, mostly in the context of drafts. With this, I chose to begin writing when I have the energy to churn out pages worth of material, which is usually the opposite of when assignments are due. As I worked out of tandem with the official due dates, I found that the small but noticeable anxiety from leaving due assignments undone can be eradicated if I just submitted fairly early. This is something I learned from the class specifically, and have since applied to others.
The second piece, on word use, I can pull an example from my most recent piece, the creative choice essay. In one instance, my writing went from “Agnes had never seen the city as a child. Growing up on a manor, there’d never been this many people within her eyesight at once, and what sort of people near her,” to “Agnes had never seen the city as a child. The countryside was nothing like it, there’d never been this many people within her eyesight at once, and what sort of people near her.” Here I can see my inclination to use larger and punchier descriptors, like manor, push up against reality, the reality that Agnes, though now extremely poor, was at best a non-starving peasant, who while maybe living near one, would never have grown up example on a manor. This change, from my first draft to my final, demonstrates how I’ve had to accommodate my choice in verbiage such that the final can be best captured in one’s head.
My final showing of how I’ve changed as a writer this class is from the first essay I wrote, the Opinion Editorial. In this piece, I can harken back not to a shift from first to final draft, but all the way in the references section instead. Here it reads,
Davis, Mike. City of Quartz. Verso Books, 2006.
Kunstler, James Howard. The Geography of Nowhere: the Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape. Simon & Schuster, 1994.
While this seems normal out of context, it should be noted that I literally bought these books and read them, partially if not fully, for this very editorial. This wasn’t completely random, as I’d had my eyes on them regardless of the assignment, but here was where I found the most valuable writing lesson of all. In general, if I actually enjoy and am invested in the topic I am writing about, then the actual writing is extremely easy. The topic, suburbs, and my take on them, that they’re an affront to humanity, fit fairly well into my thoughts on the matter at the time. Therefore, it was easy to create a, hopefully, well worded and punchy piece on how I think of them, which will inform the sorts of writing courses and assignments I pursue in the future.
