Final Reflection
Coming into this class, I was expecting the average English class where you are bored to death listening to your teacher drone out Shakespeare quotes for an hour and fifteen minutes. I lost a lot of interest in English in high school due to many of my teachers showing little to no interest in how we felt about the material. From the first day of ENC 2135-15, I knew that I would be mistaken about my previous assumptions. Mat taught many real-life skills and tricks that will benefit our writing in our future college careers. Aside from sparking out interest in class with allowing us to talk about what we wanted to, he made the projects interesting, so it was easy to write and included new techniques in each one to help us learn something new.
For the first project, I would have to say it was my favorite. I thought that it was the easiest because we did not have to do a lot of outside research. I felt that this was a nice introduction to the course and what we had in store for the rest of the semester. I enjoyed going through my past memories and picking out an event to write about. Although I liked my event and the things I have been doing in my life related to the topics for the projects, I feel like it could be difficult for other students. Thinking of a life-changing event when you are only 18 was slightly difficult because I personally feel like I haven’t experienced anything truly life changing yet. Writing the first draft of my paper was not difficult but I was still confused by the text of my event before I met with Mat. During my conference Mat explained to me that the text does not need to be an actual book but a specific event or even conversation. After clearing this up, he also told me that I should add some more details to the end of my paper where he thought the text would be. After leaving the conference I felt better about the project and was able to write the final draft with no issues.
The second project proved to be much more difficult than the first. Although I knew what I wanted to write about, I was having the worst time attempting to think of ways to elaborate on the topic and make it into a 2000-word paper. For the first couple of drafts I was struggling to write. I felt like I was barely making the word count and the information that was on my paper was complete garbage. I was looking forward to the conference to clear up a lot of the confused thoughts I had. I told Mat that I was having trouble hitting the word count for each draft and that I did not feel like my paper was coming together the way I envisioned. He reassured me and said that it is normal to be confused with this paper since it is more troublesome. He gave me the idea to give more of a character analysis with the woman I interviewed. This helped a lot with my word count because at first, I did not think we were allowed to put the whole interview into our paper. After our conference, I had a much easier time writing the paper but honestly, I felt like I had to draw out my ideas in order to make it long enough for the word count. Eventually, I sucked it up and just wrote the paper because I knew I was not lacking the information, just the motivation. The main lesson I took away from this paper is that detail is everything. Mat expressed to me that in any paper I have from this point on, the professor will always appreciate a large amount of detail and when you include it, your paper will become significantly better. Although this second project was long and a little more difficult, what I learned from it will stick with me for the rest of my life when I need to write.
For the last hoorah of ENC 2135, we had project three. This project was very enjoyable to complete because it allowed us to spark our creative sides. It was very simple and straightforward. I never had any difficulty because my second project practically handed me options for my third project. It showed me how different forms of advertising and genres can spark the interest of different audiences. By doing my own project and observing others, I observed amazing talent in our classroom. It showed me that our generation has a bright future ahead of us and if we keep up the innovation and creative mindset, the world is at our fingertips.
This class actually helped me develop new writing skills and a mindset for writing that will greatly impact my future studies. Thank you Mat for such a great semester and being such an amazing teacher!!