Giuseppe Biondi
Dr. Hall
English 1121
This semester has come to an end, but that doesn’t mean that I will forget what and how I progressed as a writer and a student. The class has been one of the funniest and enjoyable since high school. What I think is key for a student to get better at something is to like what you are doing. I liked this class and if I could, I’ll take it every semester again, but I can’t.
This class and Dr. Hall have taught me that no one is perfect at something. I’m not a perfect writer and I think that no one is, it’s just a matter of you, liking something. During this time, I learned my weakness and strengths, and how to exploit them. The biggest weakness that I have is that sometimes I don’t take my time doing things, like in this class writing as fast as possible just to finish the assignment; this only got my writing worse than it was before and I had to adjust my attitude of rushing my writings. In unit 1 like when I was talking about my grandpa, I forgot to introduce him well, this one of the many mistakes I did. He has an important role in my unit 1 and not describing him, is like working without knowing who your boss at work is. In unit 1 I said, “The tree reminds me of my grandfather, as if he is watching me waking up every morning, he’s what the tree remembers me of, because it was him who gave life to the tree, and my feelings for it”. This is where I started making the reader confused, because I kept talking about my grandpa and how he is an important part of my life, but I never describe him as a person always as an image of someone that only I know. I just needed to remember that, yes, I do know him, but the reader does not. Also, in unit 1 I talked a lot about Sicily and its nature and how majestic it is, but still I did not describe it enough to let the reader having a self image in their heads on how it really was. This all seemed banal to me, but I understood that when you write you must do it for yourself and the reader too, so that they can understand what you are talking about, especially if you have to post it somewhere. Now at the end of the semester my strength is that I know, because of my past errors, where to stop and really think about what I have to do to make things better. Before I said that I had many errors in unit 1, and because I knew I could make way better than I did the first time I wrote it, I revised it. From the time of the publication on openlab to when I revised it I understood that it really was bad, but sometimes you don’t see it right away and you must let the time pass between. So, one of the biggest errors I did was not to describe my grandpa and Sicily, and these two is what I really tried to focus more in the revision. In the second paragraph of the revision I described my grandpa more but not too much otherwise the character, my grandpa, wouldn’t evolve like I wanted to. And like my grandpa Sicily nature too, I tried to evolve them like a movie, so little by little.
During the semester we had fun moments and days where you had to write and that was it. I don’t know why but every time we had an assignment I always do it the day before, this is one of the many stupid things that someone does. Yes, for this time I’m calling my self stupid and not because I am, but because I’m stubborn. This is one of the many things I also adjust and completely get rid of; because it’s so bad doing things last minute and because of it I had the same problem with unit 3 where I did rush again like unit 1, and of course I did not expect a high grade. In the unit I had a lot of grammatical errors which when you have like 2 weeks to finish the assignment, it should be perfect. I’m going to be honest most of them were rush errors. One of them was like “Nowadays with advanced technologies in the world, cities are evolving to bigger and bigger cities everyday coming…” as simple as the introduction I already started making errors, and when you have a bad start you’ll also have a bad ending. Knowing that I could have done it in way that would have made it better I took the chance Dr. Hall gave me and of course I revised as well. I adjusted the introduction and know it starts like this “Nowadays with advanced technologies it is easier for construction industries to build buildings, and because of that cities are evolving to bigger and bigger cities everyday coming, but they also bring disadvantages”. First I didn’t say what technology has to do with cities getting bigger, but now in the revised unit 3 and what I said did change the introduction so that the reader can understand what technologies have to do with cities, in this case they do help construction industries because of new equipment evolved with new technologies making buildings is not as difficult as it was before, therefore cities like New York are getting bigger every day. These are all errors that I made when rushing and my point is that, only at the end of the semester I understood how to be a better writer and that is by proofreading your writings.
At the end of the semester what I see of my self is that, yes, I did become better at endling some things but like I said no one is a perfect writer and that is what makes a writer better. I think that making errors is what brings you a step further than you were before. Looking back, I see a student trying to rush things just to get rid of them, but now I see a student that understands when to give it all and trying to always do the best. At the end; I see myself a step further.
