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First Relflection:
First Relflection:
When I was very young, I used to keep a worn-out school notebook underneath my bed, and in my spare time, I would fill it with fantastical stories and adventures that I had visualized in my daydreams, along with my own original songs, musical numbers, sheet music, and my own poetry, sonnets and haikus that enthralled my childlike mind. I’ve always had a fondness for writing and reading while growing up, and at the time, it was my main source of creative expression. It was the work that I believe any eight-year-old would be proud of creating, but as the years have waned on, I find that my day-to-day lifestyle doesn’t really have a need for that creative position anymore. Nevertheless, I feel that my writing skills have developed into something that I still find valuable to this day. Mind you, I’m not saying that I have a lot of expertise on writing in general, and there are many things about my writing skills that are lacking in overall skill. But for me, my writing experience was always personal and kept close to my heart because, for many years, it was my only way to express myself with a creative outlet that I thoroughly enjoyed. I never really desired to show anyone my works out of fear of being judged or criticized, and I believe it is for that reason specifically that my writing skills have plateaued with my experience.
So for the longest time, I did not think of continuing or progressing my skills in writing because I did not think that I would have a need for it again. That was until I started going back to school, and now more so than ever, I feel that advancing my writing skills is paramount to succeed in my degree. In the future, I would like to work on my fear of expressing myself so that I may see my skills as a writer grow and flourish. For that to be accomplished, I will need to work on being open to receiving helpful feedback on my drafts without fear of being judged. This will be the biggest hurdle for me to overcome, but I know that this will help me become more confident in my own abilities and develop my skills. I would also like to work on my sentence structuring, too, because I feel that after many years of not working on my writing skills, I definitely feel out of practice and a little out of my own league. I wish to see my writing techniques be paced better and more fluent, so that way the reader can more easily understand the topic of discussion and flow with what I am attempting to convey with my words. I believe that by working on these factors, I will see an improvement in my writing and will also likely have the opportunity to see and improve other areas of my writing as well.
Final Reflection:
As my final day of English 102 approaches, I can feel many emotions flowing through me: relief, satisfaction, pride, and even small doubts. This class has pushed me in ways that I never expected from an English class, and I think that’s a good thing personally.
Our work on the final project has certainly provided many eye-opening realizations about myself and my own topic for it. For one, I had a lot of trouble coming up with a suitable topic for my proposal because I had to reevaluate what my communities actually were and where they lie within society. Thankfully, I had eventually found a place within the ADHD community for women and had even come to be diagnosed with ADHD myself, which made the project all that more meaningful for me. Secondly, as I continued through this course every week, I was taken aback with how in-depth the writing process actually is, and it is within this realization that I discovered that I still have a lot of learning to do with writing and its processes. There were strategies and methods that I had never considered or heard of before, but there were also some strategies that I had unknowingly adopted into my writing process from previous work. That being said, I think that the biggest surprise for me was giving and receiving feedback for our work. As I have mentioned before in my first reflection, I was, and still partially am, terrified of having anyone review my work other than myself, but I knew I had to challenge my fears of being judged and ridiculed in order to proceed in the class. To my pleasant surprise, I found the feedback to be so invaluable to my writing process and even find it to be necessary for any work of writing.
Lastly, despite all of these helpful discoveries and pleasantries, I had to come to realize that I was my biggest challenge for this project and the class was not finding a community or learning new strategies, but it was actually within myself. Truth be told, I had not expected this class to challenge and push me so much throughout the semester. I have always taken pride in my writing and have a very close bond with my writing skills and techniques, and I have harbored those aspects of myself within me long before I had taken this class. However, I was definitely not prepared for the amount of work required to improve those skills, especially with being out of school for so long beforehand, and overtime, I had started to doubt myself and my writing when I wasn’t showing the results I wanted. I had to face my insecurities and overcome my own doubts many times throughout the course. Looking back on that journey now, I understand that the struggles and difficulties were necessary in order to open myself up for growth and gain more experience in my skills, and I can argue that my biggest lesson learnt from this course is that I am still a good writer and that I just need to trust myself enough to overcome my fears and worries in order to truly flourish.
Going forward, I do feel that it will be necessary to develop a healthier relationship with my writing so that I can approach new opportunities as a welcoming challenge and not as an obtrusive obstacle, and despite my own worries, I am very proud of how much I have accomplished in the short span that was given, and I believe that I have done well with the material provided. One thing that I believe that helped me a lot was making sure to reach out for help when I most needed it, and I’m proud of myself for allowing me to seek the aid instead of attempting it by myself. My new goals for my writing skills, other than practicing in my own time, will be to grow my vocabulary so that I can find new ways to express my words and potentially reach out to more individuals. But I also want to look into other uses of writing besides the persuasive letter/memo that was required for the final project. I also mentioned in my first reflection that I enjoyed writing poetry and short stories when I was younger. After everything I have learned in this class, I would like to try to mature those skills by learning new methods and techniques that are commonly used for those writing structures. This is a more personal goal than it is a professional one, but I would like to see how far I can go with something I enjoyed as a child and carry it into my future adult years.
With all of this being said, I also feel that my skills as a writer will be instrumental within the anthropological field (my major). The field itself requires a lot of writing regardless of what career you choose. Now, since I’m still fairly new into this journey, I’m still clueless about what I want to do exactly, but thankfully, the degree offers many varieties of positions career-wise. Most anthropology work is heavily involved in research, so I can potentially use my writing skills to create articles and research documents within a specific domain. Or, if I decide to go into a more business aligned career, I can also create business memos and letters within the company or organization, which I have a little bit more experience in. Regardless, I have many potential options once I graduate.
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