I want to start my reflection by looking back at the experience I had with the class as a whole. Leaving the class for the last time on Wednesday had a bittersweet feeling to it. Throughout my first two semesters at CCNY, it was the only class where I had the ability to develop different connections with people. It made me value the class a lot more than I usually would. It was the only class so far that I felt bad leaving for the last time. I’m going to thank my professor, Kyle Hoehne for that. He created a great environment for an English class that many don’t take seriously and I’m not taking that for granted.
When reflecting on the course itself, it helped me develop and advance a lot of skills for me. The course helped me to not only create different ways to produce pieces of writing, but it also helped refine the techniques I already knew. My strategies, when it came to developing a piece, so whether that be brainstorming, drafting, revising editing, and finally self-assessment all were trained in the class. That was obviously one of the main points of the class, as are all english classes.
For each of the papers written in the class, there was a brainstorming phase where I needed to decide what to write about. For the memo, the brainstorming was pretty easy, whereas for the other papers it was more challenging. This class helped develop those skills by teaching certain techniques that would help spur someone’s thought and help get it going. My professor taught us techniques that, although quite simple, proved to help the more I utilized them.
When drafting, simple techniques like listing, bubble diagrams, free writing and other techniques helped with this. Rather than trying to develop the the final draft straight up, by using the techniques taught, it helped get my ideas down. But then again, this class wasn’t just writing. It was writing for engineers. It was teaching us to write, with the purpose of that writing being in the engineering world. We aren’t meant to think over the top and be creative. We’re meant to get our ideas down in a good and concise way. That’s a reason why I liked the listing way of writing. You get your ideas down then expand from there. That right there, shows the purpose of this class. I developed a system of how I liked to write, and will end up using it down the line.
Peer review and the environment created in the class were on of the best that any class could have. When you come into college, you meet people with all different types of cultures and backgrounds. With the environment created, all these different people easily communicated, worked together and off each other. Comfort was something that everybody felt which was an integral part of the class. Getting comfortable here in the class at CCNY was a model for how to communicate later down the line. I saw this as a running theme. Everything that was being done was for the sole purpose of preparing us for later down the line, and that’s it.
This course was really useful for the the things mentioned above. Brainstorming, drafting, revising, peer review, all those things. However, these weren’t even the main focuses in the class. The main point was to prepare us for writing in the real world. My professor taught us how to properly address people and problems in a letter. He taught us how to present and showed us how to correctly analyze graphs. These are all things that seem arbitrary, but these are all important things that you will end up needed. Being able to understand these simple things will end up being handy for you. Whether that be you needing to pitch an idea to a group of investors, or needing to constantly communicate with people through email. You will need the skills from this class to write up your pieces.
When it comes to creating the piece, this course was great. We always wrote journals in the beginning of classes which always got us in the writing mood and helped bridge us into the beginning of the class. The class always helped train us with writing, thinking, and overall, the whole process. The discussion posts were something that wasn’t bad either. Going home and recapping a certain chapter helped with going over a certain topic, to help us learn it better. The practice questions at the end seemed over the top at times, asking for weird things, but at the end of the day, all it was doing was prepare us.
The decisions I made were off of things I learned in this class. For all my pieces, I needed to research, find graphs, pictures, different sources. The textbook used, as well as the teaching went through how to properly choose the right sources. Right sources, meaning both credible and useful. You want your sources to be true, but make a point at the same time. We were told about various different databases and encouraged to use them for better sources. JSTOR is one that everyone uses and I used as well. The reasoning is obvious. You want as credible a source as possible. At the same time, all these sources are very developed pieces of writing and research. Although I used JSTOR, I did, for the most part try and find good sources off of google instead. Most of the time, I wasn’t looking for extremely complex research and even simple articles were good enough. When looking for pictures, obviously I didn’t go through JSTOR to find them. I went through google to find pictures that were most applicable to what I was writing about. There seemed to be no need to look into it that much. That was something that was difficult though. Deciding whether or not to use a database or just use google. You could think you are finding a good source but it could be credible. At the same time though, you could go to JSTOR, and look through a really dense database, with all different types of information that doesn’t even apply to what you’re writing about. There will always be a tradeoff, and that’s just a problem you will have to deal with.
With those sources I then needed to cite them properly. The APA citation style used throughout the class was different. Throughout my writing career so far, I’ve only used MLA, so seeing APA scares you. Not only did we learn to properly cite using APA, but we were forced to use it in all our papers and presentations. We were penalized if we didn’t, which made us have to learn it so when we actually need it, we knew how to use it. Reference pages and citations were always needed which helped develop our overall skills in researching and citing as a whole.
When looking at the rhetorical situation, and basing the way you write off of that is also another huge part of the course. When writing the memo for example. You needed to understand who you’re writing to and why. At the same time, when you are reading something, you have to understand the same thing as if you were writing it. Knowing the whole rhetorical situation is important. It forms how you’re going to write or read the piece. Knowing what the purpose is, or knowing who you are talking to is just as important as anything else. You also have to think about who is reading your piece. You have to think about what they’re thinking. If you lack grammar for example, people will think that you might not be as credible as someone who has proper grammar. This is all things that we had to focus on in class. You can’t leave anything unthought of.
Some people might look at this course and think that it isn’t that serious, or it isn’t that deep. However, when looking and thinking deeper into everything that was taught during the semester, there are so many important aspects that you will need later down the line. The writing process, the research, the rhetorical situation and everything else were all were aspects in this course that were important and told in order to better us for later.
