I’m not sure how to feel about my first college level English class. While I expect the class to be rather difficult, with many bumps in the road, I also look forward to watching my writing skills significantly improve. As of now I would consider myself to be an adequate writer, as I certainly am not the best writer in the world but I don’t think I’m too bad either. There are numerous ideas that I look forward to learning in class this semester. The one at the top of that list would have to be analyzing key ideas in many different genres. It will be very interesting to learn about different types of writing, and how you should write based on what you are writing for (for example how you write differently if you’re writing for an article as opposed to if you’re writing a novel).
I expect myself to run into obstacles while learning about poetry in particular. Many times, when it comes to poetry, it is harder for me to understand the main point of a poem which then makes it hard to write about. For that reason, it would be very helpful and I would greatly appreciate it if my professor were to go through poems a tad slower than we would learn other topics. As a freshman in college, it can be a bit overwhelming at times to juggle all the work for class and study, along with taking care of the out of school responsibilities. In order to make sure I have the greatest chance of succeeding, I intend on being very organized, by writing down everything I have to do and when the ideal time to do it is. I also plan on getting all my work done as soon as possible, and not waiting until the last minute to complete assignments.
With all that being said, I hope to gain a new level of writing. I hope that my vocabulary improves, along with my writing style and my tendency to be repetitive at times. In addition to improving my writing skills, I wish to gain new friends with fellow students through this course. I also hope to have a professor who will guide my writing and teach me how to be the best writer I possibly could be.
I also did not like studying poetry in English class in years past, mainly because of how ambigious it can be. I also hope to improve my vocabulary and stop being repetitive in my writing. I often find myself using the same word in back to back sentences, but don’t know any other alternative.
I knew I was missing something in my post that had to do with English being difficult, and I found it when reading your post––poetry. Since you felt poetry was difficult, I expected you to say that there should be less of it or less time spent on it as I feel a lot of people would say, but you surprised me by saying the opposite. I agree that we should spend more time on poems because I feel that once understood, they can be influential and adhesive.
Hi Ben (and Ishaan and Sam),
I’m very aware of how frustrating/intimidating/confusing encounters with poetry can be, though I also believe it to be one of the most rewarding genres to read. For this reason, I have decided for this semester to have us read many poems, but not to base writing assignments on them. My goal in doing this is to let the poems reach you without any fear of having to “get it” or “explain it” afterwards. Maybe if you can just sit with poems, you will come to feel more open toward them, which may in turn lead to you getting real enjoyment and even solace from them.