Dear Marlen,
When I first scheduled college writing at orientation, I pictured it to be a boring English type of class with nothing but worksheets to do and structured essays to write. I dreaded writing the usual five-paragraph essay because it was such a chore to do in high school. Reflecting on my work over the semester, I realize that a five-paragraph essay is no longer in my vocabulary. I actually learned that there are many different ways to write a paper throughout the course of our reference book and reading materials. What I am trying to say is that this class broadened my knowledge about papers and writing techniques.
This college writing course helped me to formulate ideas and opinions openly. In high school, we never had an essay or paper where we could freely write whatever we wanted, and receive an A on it. While high school taught me the proper techniques, this college course taught me that there is freedom outside of the boundaries. Even though this course was just a general educational course, I got so much out of it, and actually looked at writing in a different way. As I said before, I thought of writing as a chore, and now it is more like creating art to me. Everyone likes talking/writing about themselves, so what better way to get inside our heads than to write about our inner feelings and stories.
I am a kind of person who likes to plan ahead of time, and I really liked using the five senses as guidelines. At first, when you told us we would have to write a ten-page paper for our final, I thought, “what on earth will it be about?” I didn’t have any doubts that I wouldn’t be able to do it, however, it was the amount of information supplied that I would have to worry about. I tend to stumble over too much information, and obviously too little information. What you had us write significantly helped my final paper just because it related to everything I did. I thought the final project was a perfect way to end the semester because not only did I write a paper for a grade, I wrote it for me and whoever else reads it later in life. Even by reading others’ autoethnographies, gave me more insight on what I wanted to write myself. Reading their papers helped me to write my own and formulate opinions.
As far as changing/keeping the content of the class, I would not change too much about it. You have showed all of us that anyone can be a good writer, and you also gave positive feedback on almost everything we did, but you weren’t afraid to tear things apart either. Since the course was college writing, I liked how we mainly focused on writing about ourselves and we learned things in the process. This class inspired me to write in more detail about anything I choose to write about from now often, whether in my journal or a major research paper. I feel as if I am ready to move on and excel in other classes that require a lot of writing because of this class. Writing a lot helped me prepare for bigger assignments, and I have no doubt that I will be able to do them.
Sincerely,
Olivia Stofko
