IV. Reflection in English 121

Since English was my favorite subject throughout high school, there was a lot of pressure to continue my success in the topic in college as well. With that pressure came great disappointment after my definitional essay was returned to me with the letter B. This is only one example of how college has challenged me far beyond high school. In order to view descriptions of my assignments and to link to the finished products navigate to the English course page under the "Courses" heading. My first college assignment was very intimidating, which is why my instructor's decision to give a graded but not weighted assignment was greeted with my personal sighs of relief. I had no idea how much higher the bar was in college, or if I could reach that bar with even my greatest leap. It felt like more than simply a new level; it felt like I had suddenly jumped into a brand new league, a league where past standing meant nothing. It also meant starting over with a new instructor whose preferences for style and organization were completely unknown to me.

My initial problem with writing this assignment was simply the topic. What memory in my life was important enough to become a part of the present momentous moment? Eventually, that problem was solved when I forced myself to think of the first memory that seemed truly significant to my intellectual growth. It beam abundantly clear that the appropriate moment for my paper would be when I truly started thinking for myself despite obvious contradictions with what my mother had always taught me. A new problem arrived to replace the old when my teacher informed me we were to incorporate a visual element to liven up our papers. I thought back to senior year, when I read my friend's research paper on Oscar Wilde. In her paper, she split her piece with headers that were each assigned their own subject. This seemed to greatly contribute to the smooth flow of her paper and helped to connect every piece of her writing to the larger picture. Since the visual element worked so well for her, I decided it could work for me as well and proceeded to divide my paper into smaller subject headings.

I was fairly satisfied with my finished paper and didn't think I would go back and change much of what resulted from my work. I would, however, change my presentation of the paper because I was not well enough prepared. I should have practiced the speech more so that I did not end up making my introduction a third of the speech, which caused me to have to compress the true point of the speech and the paper into one sentence. Immediately following our introduction assignment was, of course, yet another essay. This time we were asked to write a definitional essay, which was quite different from our previous diagnostic assignment. Up to this point in my life I had written one other definitional piece for a speech class in 9th grade, so, as you can see, it had been awhile since a similar request was made of me. Not to mention the fact that the pressure was back on, considering this would be our first valid graded assignment. It also didn't hurt that it was worth 20% of our total grade for the semester. Going in I was quite concerned, since it had been an extremely long time since my last definitional essay and even that was the only one I had written up to that point.

The first problem I encountered was choosing an organizational method for the paper: determining what I would include, how it would connect, and what examples I would use. This obstacle also included deciding on the length of my introduction. I decided to cut the amount I had originally written in half. After eventually piecing together an outline I was then greeted with the challenge of incorporating a visual element into my paper so that it would use both written and visual communication methods. I also had trouble deciding where to seek my sources and how they could apply to the outline I had finally put together. I eventually resolved all these problems and finally managed to create a paper I felt was ready to be turned in.

Looking back at this assignment I greatly regret not dedicating more time to editing and revision before turning it in as a final draft. I should have gone into my instructor's office hours and had him look over it, or had my English major friend review it before I decided it was finished. All in all, I suppose it was a lesson in utilizing all the resources one has available.

The next assignment I completed for my English course was a rhetorical analysis of a documentary of our choice. My personal selection was a documentary titled Koyaanisqatsi, a film without dialogue that stands as a testimony to the slow deterioration of our world because of technology. This assignment was yet another nerve-wracking one for me, since I had never written a rhetorical analysis before, let alone been asked to critically analyze a film. My first issue with this assignment was deciding what aspects of the movie I wanted to focus on, since there were several different tropes and canons to choose from. I also had to choose a way to organize the information into my final paper. This paper also required a visual element like the last piece recommended; however, the visual component was much more important in this assignment. For this assignment I was much more thorough in my editing and revision process and my final work reflects this. The finished paper was one of the best pieces of writing I have ever completed, and I attribute that fact to the extensive revision it saw before finish. I hope that I continue the writing process I went through for this piece for all papers I am assigned in the future. This project was quite time-consuming yet in the end, quite enjoyable as well. I began the assignment working with my group to select an event and make sure that we had all the resources available so that we could attain the information necessary to complete requirements. We encountered quite a few obstacles in the process of initial documentation since our first event ended up getting canceled, and when we found an alternative event it was too late to rent the same video camera again. We were provided with another one by the parents of another of our group members unfortunately, the camera's zoom was utterly worthless. We improvised again, and this time I went back to my dorm to get my tape-recorder, which also broke partway through the event and required some handling to fix. We eventually managed to get pictures, quotations, and interviews of our event despite the many things that decided to trip us up along the way. 

The next problem involved the remainder of the assignment, which was to create a poster on Adobe Photo shop. It sounds perfectly simple unless you're like me and realized that you had never used Photo shop before. This problem slowly amended itself the further I got into the assignment and the more I grew accustomed to the concept of layers and other basic Adobe concepts. After a few days I found that I actually enjoyed using the program, but it took a while to get used to it. However, after I finished my design I was quite pleased with the way it turned out. Next came writing the presentation to give with the poster for the final part of the assignment. This part of the project wasn't too difficult and I am also satisfied with how that presentation came out. It was an all-around good experience and eventually became my favorite English assignment of the semester.