Coming into this class I felt very confident in my writing, and I didn’t expect many difficulties. I had taken Honors and AP English all throughout high school and had always done well, so I thought that would translate to this course. What I had overlooked, though, is that this is my second year at Ohio State and up until this class I had only written pretty much 2 or 3 very short papers. Essentially I have simply lucked out with the professors I have had, because none of them made long essays a part of their curriculum. So I’ve gone a full year and a half without doing any kind of analytical writing, which showed at the beginning of this class.
I had not done as well as I would have liked on our first paper, because I think I actually forgot how to write good essays. I didn’t go into great detail on most of the points I was analyzing, and I suppose I simply did not analyze my subject as in depth as I should have. Plus, writing about gender and sexuality in American cartoons is a difficult subject in my opinion because it is not something we think about in our everyday lives, and requires some deep thought.
I think I eventually started to improve my writing though once the Secondary Source Analysis rolled around. I detailed my arguments much more and went into greater depth on the topic, and I connected my individual ideas much better than before. I had also received a much better grade, which is a plus. Once my commonplace manuscript was due, I felt I had written even better than before, and once again my grade had improved.
Ultimately, I think I not only “remembered” how to write good papers in general, but I think I improved to a higher mark than I ever reached before. Each successive assignment earned a higher grade than the one before it, so I think my writing improvement is especially evident there. I would attribute much of this to being forced to think analytically about our course theme, because again it is not something I had given much thought to beforehand, and so it resulted in better papers in the end. I’m happy with my performance in this class, and hopefully my writing will continue to grow in future classes.
Agreed: it's always satisfying to see your own improvement throughout a course.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with the course theme idea; I believe I learned the most by being forced to think analytically about something I generally never think about.
I honestly wish I had taken difficult English classes like you. I think your improvement has come from being steadily challenged by all of your english courses. I'm glad you feel like your writing has gotten better. I feel the same way
ReplyDeleteI completely agree when you say you got lucky with your teachers. Though I had to write longer pages, like 6 to 7 pages, they weren’t graded hard and I usually did really well on them. I agree that I didn’t do as well on my first paper but I feel like it’s a common thing. I had to get used to what Tory liked and disliked about my writing.
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