Reflection Letter

Of the dozens of English Composition 101 classes to choose from I registered for item #3692 simply because it filled a diversity requirement I wanted to get out of the way. While the subjects we have covered do tend to be a bit edgy and have the potential for controversy, I found another area of diversity which will serve me well both academically and personally. Throughout this course we have written in a range of styles and formats of writing that have are relatively new and many people haven’t had much contact with. For me it was the blog. I had never explored the blogosphere and wasn’t entirely comfortable with idea of posting my writing so publicly. Once getting through the “Coming Attractions” module and understanding how publicly all of our writing would be explored, I considered dropping the class, only to discover I wouldn’t be able to get into another. But let me come back to that…

The second week of my sophomore year in high school my folks evicted me from their house after I continued to see a girl I had been forbidden to speak to. Their first warning consisted of selling the house we grew up in and moving to a school district “where she wouldn’t be an issue” and I should have taken them as serious in their purpose. After finally receiving a waiver to take my GED test, I closed the door on education, and shoved off into the troubled waters of life where I drifted about with the social currents for another decade until finally coming to shore in the city of Seattle. After meeting my wife a short time later, I set to cleaning up the wreckage of my past, and building a new life based on family, responsibility, and education. With that history and these new promises of stability and responsibility biting at my brain, I had gone as far as I could in my school work without meeting the English 101 requirement.

If I dropped this class I would be unable to continue with my program spring quarter, effectively breaking the promises I had made to myself and family. So, publicly we explored the realms of community, tradition, and identity while class discussions helped me confront many of the ways I keep people at a distance and in doing so realized how that has prevented me from pursuing better opportunities.

As we began the discussions and reading of our first segment Identity, I began to relax a little, feeling like I had a reasonable grip on the concepts of each of the modules to come. What I hadn’t anticipated was my ideas wouldn’t be a factor in the main essay projects and I would have to learn to use synthesis of other author’s essays to support my one idea or thesis. This proved to be a challenge in every module, but I began to notice that the way I was reading and taking notes was becoming more analytical. While reading the assigned works I found that my focus was directed more toward supportive ideas than flowery bits or humor to augment my own ideas. This same approach of anticipating the assignment began to appear in my studies for other classes and soon found both my note taking and test preparation skills had improved dramatically.

Community was my favorite module overall and I enjoyed each of the assigned readings, exploring ideas in the discussion boards and blog, and finally the essay which I had high hopes for but again only edged by with the same mediocrity my Identity paper had achieved. The other writing assignments and especially exploring other people’s ideas in the discussion boards and conversations spurred from them were a pleasure and I felt like I really got to know some people on a level I wouldn’t have expected possible from an on line class. In reading Shari Caudron’s "Befriending Barbie" I learned how starting an essay with a vague or somewhat misleading introduction that get’s the reader incorrectly anticipating the direction of your essay can make the impact of your true message much deeper. She begins with “Debbie Baker has extraordinary fingernails' (this sound like your mother has forced you to say something nice about that bratty girl Debbie Baker) 'They’re very long. And pink. Fantastically pink. So pink that if you weren’t completely focused on your conversation with her, you’d be distracted by them” - (page 167), which kind of had me ready for a fluffy article teasing about the triviality of Barbie. Caudron then get’s to a heart breaking story of how Debbie Baker’s child died and how her community of Barbie collector’s rallied around her and became a second family.

Intermission was a well enjoyed break after the demoralizing experiences of the first two essays and I looked forward to not having to write a thesis based essay at the end. What I managed to overlook was that the free write was under such a tight time limit and still expected that we adhere to the same thesis based writing that had dogged me so badly already. I could handle the idea of not knowing the exact subject in advance and felt confident I could watch the movie enough times and take enough detailed notes that I would be able to put together a paper in a short amount of time. What I overlooked was that it was 1 hour and we would still be expected to write a thesis based argument. It had taken me days of work and exploring many different avenues to come up each thesis in the first two papers, and now I had an hour to discover a thesis and defend it. I crumpled under the pressure and couldn’t focus my thoughts let alone focus and drive a thesis. It was so bad that I didn’t look at the grade book until I had completed my final essay on tradition.

Tradition, for the most part, was purely an effort to keep on track to complete the class with a passing grade. Realizing I wasn’t going to be able to master the thesis based essay by the end of the quarter I decided if I did get through this class, I could probably successfully avoid them for the rest of my life while enjoying blogs and discussion board writing. Two out of three isn’t bad right? While I did manage to come across a thesis I really thought would be fun to explore, I overlooked the utter lack of examples in our reading to drive my thesis. So yet again I floundered to the finish line in the essay section. I thoroughly enjoyed writing the blogs, participating in the Discussion Boards, and have let down the guard enough to ask for help when I needed it. These skills will more than compensate for my utter lack of skill in essay writing and I enjoy them much more as well.

As I mentioned this English 101D was a blind pick not having any idea what would be covered. After I purchased the textbook ReMix and scanned its pages I was intrigued by what we might be doing. Once the class opened and I read the syllabus and looked at each assignment I knew that the instructors end had been carefully thought out and it was going to be a fun ride. We’ve explored a variety of writing formats while touching on a diverse range of topics designed to make us think about the world we live in and the different microcosms that exists within daily life. To conclude I haven’t given up on the thesis based essay and plan to practice the skill until it becomes a more natural part of my newly diversified writing portfolio.