The first and last days of going into Writing 102 are kind of opposite for me. On day one, I walked in imagining a class that was pretty boring and useless: a waste of my time. What I got instead was a fun and diverse class that actually helped my writing. In the past, my experience with English and Writing classes has always been to write on specific things which I have no interest. This led to me not really learning how to write in a general sense, but rather a specific, more unnatural way. Due to this robotic way of writing, I began to despise writing as a boring and useless regurgitation of ideas that did not need to be said. By the end of this semester, though, I learned that not all writing is like that. I learned that writing can be fun and relevant.
Although this may not have been my goal in the beginning, as I did not really have any set-in-stone goals for the class but just to get through it, I’d like to say that I did accomplish the goal that materialized as I accomplished it: learning to write in my own way and enjoy it. Once I got the hang of writing in a “casual-conversational” style, it became much easier and fun to do. I began to enjoy most, if not all the assignments. I did enjoy the Blog Posts and Rhetorical Analysis the most, though, as I just like more informal writing and analyzing things. There really weren’t any assignments that I didn’t enjoy, other than maybe the readings in the book. Though this is only due to them being so long and me waiting till the last second to read them.
Throughout the course, I gained many of skills that don’t only tailor to writing. This is probably why I enjoyed the course so much too. I learned how to write a cover-letter, analyze what things are trying to say, and, most importantly, how to express myself better. Going into the class, I could not get my ideas out onto paper very well at all, but by the end of the class I am able to express my ideas well enough for people to understand them when they read them (sometimes). Although I still have this problem, as well as the problem that I always repeat how I start my sentences (ALTHOUGH), it has gotten better in my writing when I noticed it happening and how to fix it. I hope to keep working on this in not only my writing, but also my speech. These are skills which I learned in actually a pretty short amount of time which I will use for the rest of my life. I guess Writing 102 isn’t really as useless as most people make it out to be.
Hopefully I don’t have to though 😀
