When I first
started taking this class I was skeptical about how I was going to like it. I’ve
never been much of a research writer. The only other real experience I had with
this was writing my senior exit paper my junior year of high school and I did
not do well on it. The writing aspect wasn’t the only alarming part of this
class. I was also worried about the blog, in class peer editing, the daybook,
and the several papers that seemed to pile up all at once.
I have never cared for online writing because it
feels awkward and I have a hard time keeping up with it. Inevitably, this ended
up really hurting my grade for the first half of the semester. But, you have to
do what you have to do and I ended up coming around to it. Once we no longer
had to post every class day and only had to post important papers or
reflections, it became less tedious and painful than previously. If I could
have it my way, I would keep the blog strictly to papers and reflections. I
think reflections throughout writing the paper could be a good idea as well so
you can get vent or talk about concerns, frustrations or writing blocks you may be
experiencing during the writing process.
The peer edits
were a concern of mine as well. It is hard for me to sit down and look at someone
else’s paper and give them constructive criticism. At times I felt like I was
negative and may have put my classmates down, unintentionally. When I was
looking at their papers I would try and not be nitpicky about grammar and punctuation
errors and focused on the bigger ideas. However, focusing on the bigger ideas
was hard for me because at times I didn’t fully understand what we were
supposed to be doing or how to do it correctly. This was very apparent in the
visual analysis. I had completely misunderstood the assignment on a couple
levels, so anything I did say to my editing group, could have potentially
misguided them or was no use at all. While not all of the advice I received was
profound, the comments that my group gave me were positive and made me feel
more comfortable with my writing.
Dun dun dunnnnn,
the day book. At the beginning of the semester I was very open to the idea. I thought
it was interesting that we would start the day by analyzing quotes and get the
gears in our brain going. Here is a picture of the
first day writing in my daybook. Everything is neat and organized. However, as the semester
went on, it was no longer important to me for those reasons. The bulk of my
first drafts of all my papers are in this book. All the adderal fueled thoughts
that rushed over me are scribbled down in those pages. The day book
fueled the fire that was to become the many papers I would be submitting by the
end of this class. By the end of the semester, my writting looks more hectic. I write, scratch out, and repeat.
Now the bulk of the class, the writing. In the first week of class when we looked at the list of potential topics, I knew mine right away. I knew I was going to focus on charter schools. When you look at my exploratory proposal essay, I state that I want to focus on whether charters were better or worse than public school. I had ideas about interviewing CMS teachers in both charter and traditional public schools. I wanted to know how they felt about their jobs, who felt more rewarded, and what the students thought. This was all good and well but as I began to write each paper, getting closer and closer to the final argumentative essay I felt my topic changing. It wasn’t which is better, it became is the choice of charter schools hurting the public education system.
The visual
analysis was the hardest paper I had to write. I was confused on where to
begin, how to connect it all and writing the analysis of each picture itself,
still haunts my dreams. When I look at the first draft of my visual analysis to
what it became at the final submission there isn’t any resemblance. The only
thing that did manage to stay the same were in fact the images. Those alone
took me hours to find, and personally they weren’t that strong and I wasn’t entirely
pleased with them. The easiest piece of this essay was breaking down the image
and picking everything apart. Analyzing it proved to be far more difficult. I
start with a very basic breakdown of every single piece of the pictures but it
grew to be an analysis of the image as a whole. Getting feedback from Megan along the way
and the encouragement to keep pushing formed my paper into what it became. Like
I’ve said earlier, this was my weakest essay but turned into one I was not only
comfortable with but proud of.
The annotated
bibliography was another painstaking essay for me. It was tedious and long,
much longer than it needed to be. However this was the most helpful essay I wrote.
This made my final argumentative essay a breeze that hardly caused me a lick of
stress or anxiety. I think this should be something that is taught in high
school and becomes a forced part of the writing process. It truly does make
life a lot easier. Analyzing
the paper was a little difficult for me. I found myself analyzing the concepts
in the paper rather than the writing itself. It wasn’t until the last minute before the
papers were due that I sat down in my daybook
and re wrote every analysis for each source.
The
Toulmin and Rogerian essay were some of my favorite. The Rogerian flowed easily
for me. Because I knew I was going to be writing my final argumentative essay
in this style, I tried to perfect it and make it foul proof. The brainstorming day for the Rogerian was a good day for me. Fueled with my trusty adderal, I went into class and basically had the entire the done by the time I left. The notecards were very helpful in guiding me to the final draft. The Toulmin was a bit more challenging.
Perhaps I didn’t understand the concept fully or maybe it just wasn’t as
strong. The grade between the two was substantial showing I was obviously
stronger in one rather than the other.
The
argumentative paper, what should have been the most daunting was the easiest
paper for me to write. My peer editing classmates agreed when they told me they
thought it was the strongest paper I had written all semester. Sitting with my
annotated bibliography, drafts of other essays and notes scribbled down in my
day book I was able to crank thing paper out in about an hour and a half. A personal
best time for myself. It was a relief to get this paper done. Not only was it
going to be the last academic paper of the semester but it showed me that
every step and every paper we did this semester was to help with this one.
While all the other papers were at times excruciating, they all lead up to this
final step and made it a breeze. This was a very eye opening experience because
it taught me that future academic papers don’t have to feel like pulling
teeth, all you need are the write components and to have done the proper
research.
All
in all, I am leaving this class optimistic about future writing assignments. These
tasks will no longer be daunting and painful as the once were. I leave feeling
prepared and knowledgeable about what it takes to be prepared to write a paper
and how you should take an extra moment to fully analyze anything before
submitting it.
