One of the areas in which I feel I have improved throughout the course of this semester is in class participation. I greatly appreciate our group discussions and our circular seating arrangement which encourages this larger conversation. It is beneficial to not only voice your thoughts/concerns about a piece of work, but to also listen to and consider other people’s opinions at the same time. You have to be open to new ideas. I also believe my writing is developing. Now, I am able to write and think in a more promptly manner. In the past, I had trouble with timing as I would tend to second guess myself. However, the short quizzes, weekly posts, and the midterm have all helped me progress as an author. I feel a little more confident in my abilities. Something I still need to work on is my free-writing. I often hesitate before I get anything down on paper and I never end up writing much by the time our time is up. I hope I can learn to let my thoughts flow without allowing my worries to hinder the process. Free-writing is an important exercise and I could surely benefit from more practice with it.
- Emily Weiss
Emily, i could understand where you’re coming from with the timing problem. Whenever one is writing, time goes by at an exponential rate and we don’t even realize it. One way you could tackle this problem is by just having a watch right next to you in order to time yourself and make sure you’re not spending too much time on on any aspect of the writing process. In addition, the hesitation you face when you’re planning out what you’re writing is a similar problem many of us face. In my opinion i feel like it’s better to just put anything anything down on paper and then fix it once you’re finished instead of rushing at the end to put everything down.
- Borys’ response to Emily
One area that i have been developing in this class is free-writing and in-class writing overall. I haven’t hand-written any work in over four years so it was a pretty big shock to discover that the midterm was going to be done in class. Although i never really enjoyed writing things out on paper, i have adjusted in this class and worked on improving this skill. Some things that i still need to work on my ability to think faster and come with responses to the free writes in a shorter period of time. At the current moment the five minutes we get is never enough for me to come up with a coherent argument that i could actually put down on paper. So i will work on this by answering more practice freewrites. Overall though i feel like all of the in-class writing activities has significantly helped me improve as a writer.
- Borys Shturman
Borys, it’s great to hear how much the free writing has helped you develop your skills. This is something I’m looking to improve myself, so I’m happy to hear your feedback. I understand your concern about wanting to work on answering the free-writes faster because i sometimes also struggle with the same problem. One thing I would also encourage you to do would be to just put your thoughts down on paper right after you have heard the prompt. Even if you have nothing to say, just write anything down; this should help you think quicker and overcome the writers block that you seem to have at times.
- Emily’s response to Borys
Response to Emily:
I am glad that you’ve found yourself engaging more in class discussion! It is definitely an area I need to stop second-guessing myself in, and simply let my thoughts out. When it comes to free-writing, I often find myself drawing a blank; I think with more practice, however, it will become easier. Rather than trying to plan what you will write, or worrying about making sense, I think you should think of it as if you were writing simply for yourself. Maybe if you think of free-writing more as if you were writing in a journal, you will stop hindering the creative inner-thoughts you have!
Response to Borys:
I also do not remember the last time that I have hand-written so much in a class! I think it is a great exercise, as we rely on technology and the internet for our writing too much in these times. I think if you begin to think of free-writing as not coming up with an argument but rather making an argument out of the thoughts that you put down on paper, you will have an easier time expressing yourself. I believe the goal of free-writing is to allow the person not to worry as much about answering a prompt, but to write down whatever comes to their mind and later piecing it together.