Portfolio Reflection
English 2150 really made me grow as a writer. Before I took English 2150, I had expected it to be easy like English 2100. In English 2100, I literally didn’t even have to pay attention to end up with a pretty decent grade that I was satisfied with. It was mainly free write on topics or books that the professor would choose for the class. However, this was not the case for English 2150. English 2150 was a challenging course, but has also really helped me improve as a writer. It was really challenging to me as one of the reason why I struggled to understand what was going on in class was because of my late arrival to the class. I had came into the class 2 weeks after class had started because of a schedule change. (2 weeks = 4 days of classes) I was definitely at an disadvantage as I was confused on what we were doing in class. Everybody had already did “responses” and a survey for the class, while I sat in class not knowing what to do. Even the theme of the class confused me. I had no idea what a zeitgeist was. All the concepts in the class were also very new to me because Professor Graves teaching style was so unique.
For Assignment 1, I struggled long and hard to write that paper because of the main reason of not knowing what to write about. It literally took me two days to get an idea of what to write about. It took a really long time to finally understand what I needed to do with A LOT of critical thinking and research. After finishing Assignment 1, I learned that as a writer you need to be super creative sometimes for papers. That was something I was not used to, as everything was basically handed to me in my past English classes. (What I meant was the topics or the book was given to you so you can write about it.) I also learned not to be as vague in my papers. I have a problem of being really vague in papers and this class taught me how to explain and reword the words differently so it makes it more clear. Professor Graves taught me this by teaching us what not to write on papers and what to avoid. He explained that Assignment 1 shouldn’t have a bias to it and that you shouldn’t play “God”. This is going to be helpful to me in the future because it’s going to remind me in my future papers to not put in my personal opinion when it’s not necessary. Sometimes, I do it in papers without realizing, so that was a really helpful tip which will improve my writing in the future.
Assignment 2 was easier for me as I had experience with doing research papers.(I did one for sociology but it wasn’t as complex.) However, the amount of effort and work I poured into the research paper was different. I put in a lot of time to researching the sources and coming up with a strong claim. I had to make sure what I was saying was valid and that the information I put in my paper was relevant. This was also the first class that I had ever written an annotated bibliography for. When coming to this class, I had no idea what a annotated bibliography or how you can even write one. I literally had no idea that you had to write annotated bibliography for research papers. One of the main problems that I had with the research paper was that I didn’t know to properly cite my sources and organize my paragraphs. When inputting my information, I would either forget to cite my sources or cite them incorrectly. That was something I had learned that I had to fix. My paragraphs weren’t organized because it was information arranged in the wrong order so it looked like I was jumping from one topic to another. That made my paper look a little funny when I did peer review with my group. My group was kind enough to point this out to me and give me suggestions which I took.
What I’m most proud of in the class English 2150 was putting in the effort and trying really hard for the class, even when I didn’t really understand how to write the first paper when I first arrived to the class. I am also really proud of myself for trying to catch up as soon as possible, so I wouldn’t be behind. Normally, I don’t even try in English classes because it is a relevantly easy class that anyone can pass. After I had taken Eng 2150, my viewpoint of that completely changed. I’ve never had to try really hard nor put in as much effort for an English class before and this is the first English class that made me do so. It also made me feel a sense of accomplishment when I first finished the research paper which was the longest paper I’ve ever had to do in my entire life. When I hit the publish button on the menu page, I felt like I was crossing the finish line to a 40 mile marathon. It was the first time I felt this way about finishing a paper. Since my intended major is marketing, I will probably have to write a lot of persuasive writing in the future. The research paper has helped a lot with this because it was trying to convince the reader that what I was writing about was relevant, why what I was writing about was an issue, and if I can convince the reader to agree with me or not. It is definitely going to benefit me in the future because I will probably be spending my life persuading people to (advertising) to buy products or whatever it is I’m trying to promote/sell.
On a final note, it was a pretty chill class overall, and Professor Graves is a really nice chill guy. I hope he enjoys the break he deserves and that he has a fantastic time in Mexico.