REFLECTION

Going into ENC 2135 I thought it was going to be just like my last English course. The one where you write five paragraph essays on random topics. I was pleasantly surprised with the projects that we had to do. 

            Project 1 was a little hard to start. I had never written a personal narrative before, so everything that I had learned about structure and flow were thrown out the window. Once I was able to get started it was really nice to not have to worry about being perfect or fitting the super specific guidelines. I also enjoyed being able to pick my own topic. When given a topic it is not usually something that I am passionate about or interested in. Being able to pick my topic made it easier to get into more detail. Overall, I think I did pretty good on project 1. 

            Project 2 was harder. I had written research papers in the past, but never anything like this. I didn’t even know where to begin. Every time I tried to start writing I would get confused at what I was even trying to say. I first gathered my interviews so that I would have something prepared for my conference. During my conference, I really started to get an idea on what I was going to use my interviews on and that I could use my own background information and experience. Instead of writing an essay that flowed from the beginning, I started out by just writing a personal and community profile. Once I had those complete I pasted them together and made sure there was somewhat of a transition into the next thing. I did not do as well on Project 2, but I believe that is because I did not analyze a text enough. This project taught me the importance of text analysis and how much it can affect your grade when not done properly. 

            Project 3 felt like a breeze. I was confused at first, but I feel like I am usually always confused. Once I clarified a few things with other classmates I didn’t have any trouble with creating the genres. I feel like for project 3 the hardest part for me was coming up with the elevator pitch. Instead of not knowing what genres to use, I had so many ideas that I struggled with picking which ones to do. 

            Overall this class taught me a lot about genre and text. I liked how un-structed each of the projects were, so I could make them how I wanted. At the same time though it was more difficult because I was not used to being able to write however I wanted in the past.