Nicole Sivyer

ENC1102

Joseph Cottle

15 April 2013

Reflection

I have gained a lot of learning experience from English this semester, much more

than I have in any previous English class. It was by far my favorite course this semester

because the smaller classroom environment provided me with more one-on-one

discussions with the professor and more peer discussions with my classmates than any

other class. It is the most helpful thing in the world to be able to have a conference with

your professor and ask them what you need to change about a paper or ask advice on

what you can do to improve your grade. I have mixed opinions on some of the articles we

read, paper topics that were given to us, and class discussions, but overall I really took

away a lot of knowledge by the end of the semester.

I took a large amount of thought and consideration into my three paper topics this

semester. I wanted to write about something that appealed to me on a personal level or

influenced me in some way so that I would be motivated to write a good paper. It is very

hard to write an interesting paper when you yourself are not even interested in the topic. I

greatly appreciated that we were allowed to choose what to write about ourselves rather

than being given set-in-stone prompts. For my first paper, I chose to write on the movie

Milk (2009) because it is about the struggle for gay rights and being gay myself; this is a

subject that means a lot to me. I would give anything to be able to marry one day and be

treated the same as heterosexual couples without all of the stares and comments, so this

movie fit perfectly. For my second paper, I chose to write a research paper on sports since

sports are and have always been my biggest interest and hobby. Growing up I played

soccer and basketball but since coming to college I picked up powerlifting and rugby as

well. I take pride in being well disciplined, fit, healthy, and strong. It was very easy to

write an interesting research paper because I knew and cared so much about the topic

already. The only hard part was that I had to write the paper from a hypocritical point of

view because I believe and act two different ways. I wrote the paper front a standpoint

that sports are taken too seriously and consume our lives, because I do in fact believe

that. However, I am one of those athletes that let them consume my life and enjoy doing

so. For my third topic, I chose to write about an ad on childhood obesity. Growing up, my

mother never let me eat fast food and always helped me make healthy choices so this

topic was something I wanted to learn more about.

Through the peer editing groups, conferences, and activities we did in class, I

learned a great amount of information about writing this semester. The peer editing

groups helped me correct silly mistakes that I missed while the conferences helped me to

take unnecessary information out of my paper along with helping me touch up final

details to help me earn an A. The activities that we did in class were not my favorite,

including the plagiarism activity and the couple of others where we had to correct

paragraphs and write them down. No one really put forward much effort into them. The

assigned readings were also a little pointless because since we were not being graded on

their completion, no one read them. Therefore the discussions were always very awkward

and slow. In the future, a way to make the discussions better would be to make the

reading assignments a grade or create a participation grade. Otherwise, there is no

incentive to add to the discussions.

Overall, I feel like I took a lot away from this class. I definitely learned a great

deal about writing, MLA format, citations, plagiarism, and much more. The small

classroom atmosphere really helped facilitate learning and the hands on experience while

the professor made things enjoyable by not being such a stickler on silly things like most

English professors tend to do. All three of my essay topics were chosen wisely so that I

could put together well thought out and interesting papers and I enjoyed writing every

one of them. I will definitely take this writing experience with me in the future to help me

with whatever job I may have.