Reflection
When I was informed by my advisor that I had to take ENC2135 after already taking both AP Language and Composition and AP Literature, I wasn’t too excited. I assumed that passing both of my college board exams would exempt me from taking another dreadful semester of extensive writing. However, this semester in ENC2135 wasn’t as dreadful as I excepted it to be. Even though it was a class at the crack of dawn four days a week, my instructor, Mat, made the class such an enjoyable experience. It was far from the basic Language Arts classes I’ve taken every year of my life in school. Mat taught our class in an interactive way involving a series of mini- presentations regarding controversial videos that raised questions in society, and the making of our own personal website to act as a portfolio for the class. I learned a lot about how to make my own website on Wix.com and learn how to create different categories and tabs on my page, organizing my work from the three projects we were assigned. Although I struggled at first to get the hand of how to work my Wixsite, Mat helped me to in a workshop he held at Sweet Shop one day after class. The class is structured into three projects that all work harmoniously together by regarding a topic that you choose in the beginning of the class. Mat introduced these projects by having us do a quick write for six minutes, regarding a community you feel welcomed in and then another one concerning a community that you want to be a part of. This helped my figure out easily that I wanted to focus on the vegan community after being a vegetarian for almost a year now. After writing a first draft for our personal narrative, I met with Mat for a conference in Sweet shop. He helped me recognize that the progress in writing my personal narrative is decent, but I need improvement on the story telling portion of my writing. I focused too much on an essay style format and need to go back and fix my essay to be more of a narrative/ story telling perspective. I also need to improve my writing by using more relatable, everyday diction that makes it appear more casual. After making these corrections, my personal narrative improved significantly and told more of a story on how I became a vegetarian in 1,000 words.
Starting my second project was a little more challenging than the first. Our class went to the library and we learned how to use RefWorks to accurately cite sources in our research paper. We were taught how to find academic sources regarding the topic of our community, so we could incorporate credible information on our community. After writing the first draft of our 3,000-word paper, we had another conference with Mat to discuss our progress. During my conference, we discussed the formatting of my research paper and which parts of my essay should be included without being too repetitive. He taught me how to accurately cite resources in my writing and told me to all the resources I used in my essay in my “Works Cited” page. We created my research question and went over ways I can accurately answer it persuasively. After my conference I typed my remaining 1,000 words and edited my citations and took out repetitive language.
Once I turned in my polish draft of my paper, I met with Mat in office hours and was sadly informed that my paper was not the content he was looking for. He told me I needed a different organizational structure and didn’t include specific, thought out language about my center of focus. Mat recommended that I trash my paper and rewrite it for the benefit of my grade. I’ve never written a research paper consisting of 3,000 words, so I nervous. Having to rewrite my paper made me ever more nervous about messing up again, so I took a long time to reorganize and develop a new plan for my essay. I extracted the strong points within my original research paper and elaborated extensively on the specific figures with my community that represent the strong nature of the vegan community. I watched documentaries and YouTube videos to learn more specific information regarding the health benefits of veganism with proven information provided by doctors. Once finishing my paper, I turned it in with caution, scared of receiving another bad grade. Mat provided me with feedback the following morning, and although there were still a few issues with my research and responses, I still received my desired grade.
The third and final project was my favorite part of the class, regarding the creation of three genres to make in representation of our community. To represent my community, I made two recipe videos, an Instagram blog, and a web page people can access to learn more information regarding “A Beginners Guide to Veganism.” This project helped me be creative in deciding what the best ways to represent the vegan community are. Overall, ENC2135 this summer semester was unexpectedly a different experience, allowing me to be creative about my own real-life goals.