Project #4

In my ENGL 1102 course, I have learned many things. One thing that has been extremely hard to learn (but was my saving grace at the end of this course) was planning. Throughout my life, I have never been a planner. I have never used my time wisely. My time has always been all over the place. Once I enrolled into ENGL 1102, I was in for a treat. Right off the bat, Dr. McGinnis had a plethora of things for us to learn in a timely manner. This meant I had to invest in a planner. Something I never thought I would use. This small planner, lead to something much larger. I found out about how to plan for projects. I became confident in how to plan out my rough drafts, peer reviewing, revising, and reflecting. The planner and class course taught me that something that means a lot to you (in my case, an A) was worth going into uncomfortable territory. To the right, you will see an example of what my saving grace throughout this semester looked like. Highlighting, stickers, and time stamps were an amazing part of this planner.

One of the first assignments that really helped me with comprehension, was the article from Iris Young. This article was extremely long, I found myself getting lost when I read it. I found that I was extremely bad at understanding and comprehending what I was reading. One thing that this course taught me was that your highlighter was your friend. I found that analyzing, and being rhetorically aware was easier after using your highlighter. This allowed me to solidify the important things throughout the articles I was reading. As the course went on, I also found myself using my highlighter with our research that we did for Project #2 and Project #3.

To the left, is an example of my highlighting marks from my first time reading Iris Young's article, "The Five Faces of Oppression". Throughout my semester, this is what my assignments looked like 95% of the time.

Throughout the course, I struggled a lot with formatting. My teachers in high school, never genuinely cared as much about formatting as college professors do. For example: in my Project #1, I found myself receiving the lowest grade I had in the class due to something as simple as improper formatting or citing. From this course, from working with group members that helped me, and working with the Writing Center, I found it easier to format in MLA. In addition to this, Dr. McGinnis taught us how to properly format. This became a lot easier as time went on.

Dr. McGinnis did something that none of my other teachers ever did. She incorporated creative outlets that no other professor or teacher in high school ever did. One thing that I loved about this course was the podcast. Although, this put me in uncomfortable territory, I found myself implementing a lot of argumentative thinking skills. I think one thing I found enlightening was attempting in my Project #2 how to not be persuasive towards one particular side. Understanding this technique allowed it to flow over into my discussion posts. Discussion posts, in my own eyes, were always looked at trying to prove my own point. However, I found using factual evidence to back up both sides of the arguments to be extremely useful.

In addition to all of these great things I learned from this course, I found myself drowning in research. I think that at times, it is extremely hard to not get lost in research. I found that the SIFT lessons were extremely helpful, useful, and allowed our work/research to be efficient. Through understanding how to research, I was able to find credible sources and avoid plagiarism while summarizing what I discovered. VIZI was also extremely useful in understanding research. VIZI taught us how to research, how to summarize, how to work with groups, and how to understand what visuals you should have in your projects.

This picture to the right, is exactly how it felt throughout the entire semester. I think it was extremely hard to find the exact research you are looking for AND having it be a scholarly article.

Overall, I think that this class was the class I experienced the most growth in. I began this class thinking I was really good at English. As it comes to find out, I found a lot of opportunities for growth. First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. McGinnis for being extremely patient, understanding, and willing to do absolutely anything to help us. In addition to this, thank you for keeping the class interesting. It is extremely appreciated.

I looked at this semester and class as a stepping stone or stair case to what my goal really is. Owning a Chick-fil-A is my ultimate dream. This class was a stepping stone to doing so.