Here are some of the goals I've developed for this term:
It is my hope that English 100 will help me further develop critical thinking skills and build my toolkit for critical analysis.
Candidly, I wish to be able to engage in debate on social justice issues without getting so incensed that I lose credibility. I would like to learn coping strategies for the side-effects of getting repeatedly outraged at the state of the world. However, I think these are probably issues to work through with a therapist, not an English teacher (even if she is super rad).
Something that I definitely could practice in English class is trying to improve my grammar and diction. I do think my writing style is compelling (please correct me if this is not true), but I would like to work on my concision and arguing a thesis explicitly. I have written an argumentative essay in the past that was nuanced and interesting enough that I was rewarded a good grade – despite the reader having to infer a thesis from the context, because I never explicitly stated it. Oops!
All that to say, academic writing is not a strength of mine. However, there are some academic journals I may one day wish to contribute to, such as the Journal of Dress History (by the Association of Dress Historians), or Costume (by the Costume Society of Great Britain). It would be wonderful if I could improve my writing to meet the standard of an academic journal, so that I could feel good about submitting work to these publications.