A few of my major writing pieces from this semester would include my Noah comparison essay, the Emerald Straits creative piece, and my Challenging Fate and Destiny essay. For the two essays I wrote, I found that I grew as a writer mainly through peer review and personal reflection over time. When I took time to think about what I was arguing for/against I started to consider what my readers with an alternative view on that subject might think, and tried to develop my essay enough to be very clear and understandable. The creative pieces I absolutely loved, because believe it or not a was able to be creative and write about anything I wanted. I grew in my writing abilities in this method of writing purely through awareness. I was never aware that if I just continuously wrote about something without a concern for the grammatical errors that I would be able to produce decent drafts to potentially decent papers. This however, was also a struggle I had with this method of writing and I had found it hard to let go of making the paper sound perfect from the first draft of the piece. The only thing I really struggled with on creating my essays, was the original clarity of my hypothesis. I would usually have a very good opening paragraph in my essays, however the hypothesis was usually covered up or clouded by other fluffed up words I had added to try and make the piece sound a bit more professional.
This quarter I read a total of 878 pages.
As a part of these page I read “King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table” and “Julius Caesar” which are are both very interesting stories that portray the themes of courage, jealousy, and leadership that are all very relatable to modern day life. Both of these stories will make the reader think about the motives of the characters actions and what could have been if events had been altered even in the slightest.
This quarter I wrote a total of 24 pages in my writers notebook.
Enjoyed class activities:
I really enjoyed the Socratic Seminar. It allowed us to see what other people thought about the actions and motives of the conspirators in Julius Caesar.
I really enjoyed the the Julius Caesar unit this quarter. I had never really gone in to great depth on the themes and main ideas that this story portrays and this unit really opened me up to them.
Challenging aspects of class:
The main thing I found the most challenging in this class was the homework load. The amount of overlapping projects, assignments(Dialectal journals, Writers notebook pages, etc...), and papers were at certain points for me very stressful, and with homework from other classes added to that I would end up getting to bed no earlier than 12am ever night.
Reading and Writing development:
The way I grew as a reader this quarter was purely by reading a certain amount each day. If I ever missed a day I would read a bit more the next day to compensate for the lost time.
The way I grew as a writer this quarter was by training myself to continuously write without questioning what I was putting down on the paper. This would allow me to continuously write without interrupting my train of thought and I was able to write more then usual.
Reading and Writing Goals:
I believe that I was able to fulfil almost all of my reading and writing goals this semester. My main goal in the writing category was to be able to write a creative piece from a first person story telling perspective and in the reading category was to read a graphic novel and read more consistently.
I believe that although I may not have written as many pages in my writers notebook as I could have, I was able to accomplish all of my other reading and writing goals and that for the amount of effort and thought I put into my papers and class projects, I deserve an A.
A goal of mine at this present moment in time is to someday become a film director and/or actor.
Thank you for a good semester.
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