Rebecca Klamen English 2150

I always knew that being a student in a writing class, an English class, meant you were supposed to be working on improving your writing skills, your reading skills, your grammar and your citations. But what I learned this semester in English 2150, was that being in an English not only improves your writing skills, but your thinking skills. Working on the weekly responses, and the rhetorical paper, enabled me to exercise critical thinking more than ever before. I found myself surprised with my own skills, my own thoughts. I was viewing the world differently- seeings I had never seen before. I look at the world definitely, rhetorically.  And so, the most important thing that I gained from this class, although my writing skills were no doubt improved, were my thinking skills.

The process in which we go about our writing processes allows for much self criticism, self awareness, and self-writing evaluation. This semester, instead of writing papers and simply giving them in and being done with it, I learned to repeatedly review and micro analyze every detail of my own work, creating a writer’s letter that details my findings. Part of this was admitting that my work was never perfect, and never completely finished. I had to request advice, help, criticism. I learned to admit my strengths, and my weakness, my challenges in creating my work. I accepted criticism, and edited my work accordingly.

Research was another major part my semester changes. While working on my narrative argument, I had a very difficult time with the research. I had my paper planned out, I knew what I wanted to say and how I wanted to prove it. But when I started to do my research, I found that it may not always go as planned. Doing research for a paper is not just about looking for what you what to find. When doing research, you are reading through many things, and learning things that are able to help make and prove your argument, editing your sacred “plan” for a paper along the way. And so- my paper became less focused on the dual curriculum, and much more highly focused on the benefit of dual language. And it worked. It wasn’t the original plan, but writing isn’t about sticking to the plan, I’ve learned.  

This semester has allowed me to be able to learn about myself as a writer, and as a person. The projects we did and papers we wrote were not disconnected- they were a part of us. Writing a digital literacy narrative, a narrative argument- allowed me to really think about myself as a writer and a person.

I’m a math person. Always have been, always will be. I never was too fond of English, or writing, or papers…. But this class convinced me, through a pretty strong thesis, that writing isn’t only about grammar and paragraphs and the right punctuation. It showed me that writing is more than that. It’s about opening up your mind, and opening up your heart. It’s about making a statement- and using the tools that you have, whatever they may be, getting that point across in the best way possible to who it needs to get across to. It’s about seeing the world differently, it’s about showing the world differently.
So, if anything, this semester, I improved not only my writing, but my perspective on writing. And to me, that’s super important.