Before this semester at BSU I had not been in a classroom for eight years. I have attempted writing many times, but to little effect or value as I could not get myself to dedicate a worthwhile time to my writing. Through my high school years I always felt myself to be a strong writer. Most assignments were easy for me to tackle without much time or effort placed into them. Perhaps at that time I was a more practiced and accomplished writer, but entering into this class I recognize that my writing is still very infant and needs immense work. Also most of my writing was done in such a way that I would appeal to the teacher grading it at that time. I knew and understood my teachers well at that time, so it was easy for me to insert their preferred thoughts and cater my writing in a way I knew they would prefer. This held me to a style of writing that was not innovative, or to much value to me. The very introduction of this class allowed me the opportunity to broaden my writing style, which was prompted by you asking us to write to an audience beyond just the teacher. Perhaps this is the very reason I feel like my writing needs such intense work is this was a whole new molding for me to fit into. It caused me to think about issue from different perspectives and allowed me the opportunity to really place myself in other’s shoes. I thought about where writers were coming from, their bias thoughts, the audience I was appealing to, and how they would receive my work, and my understanding of the material each time I sat down to write. I recognized early where my shortcomings were in relation to my early intentions to appeal to the individual grading my papers. What’s funny is the more analytical/academic side of writing we have jumped into has become easier, but writing reflections centered towards you have become more difficult. They are more difficult because I don’t want to just say things that I feel will appease what it is you are looking for so I have to really consider my thoughts on what I have learned and what I want to gain from these writings.
Sometime during unit two we talked about academic writing, in regards to its inherent difficulty and pretentious nature. I related this to a thought I had while serving at The Cheesecake Factory. The thought revolved around wine drinkers and my irritation with their pretentious presence when tasting wine. I related this to academic writing and how they take simple concepts and add complex meanings and words to them, most the time to no other end than to argue a point. Just like with the wine tasters at first I held a frustration, because I could see no value in it. Also like the wine tasters one day I let myself indulge in the pretention and instead of fighting and questioning their goals I just enjoyed it. This led to a profound interest and understanding of the academic articles I read. When you allow yourself the opportunity to really hear an argument no matter how inherently dry, your own thoughts will emanate through you and will allow conclusions you might otherwise never have considered. I attribute most of this enjoyment from the concept of reading ‘against the grain’. This way of reading takes a bit more time but real allows you to feel what the writer is trying to say. You don’t have to just see the words, but you can piece together his interests, his bias, his understanding, and then you can recognize those same things in your thoughts as you interpret his writing.
Our service learning has been an infinite source of inspiration for all of the writing we have done throughout the class. There are days where I would go in to do my service learning and wonder is this really beneficial to an English class? I had trouble answering that question until I would sit down to write and I would think about all the things that I wanted to say in regards to Anser and my topic. Also I genuinely believe that service is an important part of society, making sure that we all remember how much we are connected. This allowed my research to come alive and be an applicable worthwhile argument instead of a dull representation of the fact that I did some research. I don’t think I could say enough about my appreciation of the service learning we engaged in, but I have said ample through reflective blogs so I will leave it at this.
The video projects were tough. They required an intense amount of adaptation and communication that a couple of times made me almost crazy. With that being said, a final project done and presented it was extremely rewarding. I thought that I was just going to have to grit my teeth and push through this assignment. There was a sublime moment when my editing was beginning to come together and I could actually see pieces of the video look somewhere near finish, and I thought wow I am enjoying this. There was still a lot of work to be done but my work became an obsession. I would sit and edit and consider what needed to be done for hours. Admittedly I wouldn’t have wanted to tackle another attempt at a video during the course, but as I said it was very rewarding once the presentations were done.
While revising my website for the final portfolio, there were a few main issues I addressed. The first was attempting to support my claim that because of modernization and technology lives the reason we need to make changes in education. My attempt to make this claim more substantial was introducing the idea of a changing world and it’s effect on society all together. This allowed me to specify it toward education in the culmination of my thoughts. I feel like my final section should have been more extensive, but at the same time every time I tried to expound further it felt soap boxy and preachy. I tried to keep it short and to the point so I didn’t lose sight of my goal. My goal was to bridge the gap between education reform and why it was needed within a changing society. The second issue I tried to address went hand in hand with presenting this idea of a changing world. Reading back through my website I recognized that my pages didn’t really seem to connect one to another. I didn’t feel a theme between them all. While revising I tried to make my thoughts between each page connect with one another to allow each page to accent the others.
I want to respect your time, so I will close with a couple of thoughts. This class kicked my butt. As I mentioned I have not been in a classroom for years, and while I was still in high school it was pretty much a coast time for me. Even though there were multiple times I wanted to come to class and yell “Jeremy, you are nuts!” I also really appreciate the fact that you expected a lot from us. Coming into this class and school in general, I had the mindset of breezing through and snagging that piece of paper that says I learned things and can do a job. Through this class I recognized that what I want to get out of school will be what I put into it, and frankly I want to be a more educated person. Thank you for pushing us and complicating our thoughts to allow me an opportunity to open my mind.
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