Santi Gill
5/19/19
Carrie Hall
This writing semester was very proactive for me. Especially compared to my mindset present with me last year to now, I feel I have thoroughly progressed as a writer. Essentially, last year I was in school, taking this English class, 1102, and two or three other classes. But I felt mentally overwhelmed, I had wanted to take that particular semester off, but my parents had forced me to go pretty much. While I ended up picking classes that I liked, I was just not mentally engaged with what was being presented, and so my GPA suffered. I had the attitude that just being in school would be good for me, and would get my parents off my back. This combination is not good if you are me, and just do something for someone else’s sake instead of for yourself. To be honest I didn’t feel like I was there for myself, which is why I had no desire to do the work.
Feeling mentally overwhelmed did a toll on my grades definitely, and while I do regret it, I don’t know if it would’ve played out differently. I just did not feel good about myself. But I have had a lot of time to think between then and the semester I skipped this past Fall. To me, school is important, but if you don’t wanna be in it, you shouldn’t be. You should do what you want with yourself. This is why I appreciated this class so much, because I felt like I could write about what I wanted. I had the tools, and for the first time I had a teacher that said, do something with it. In the past I would be told to format writing assignments so specifically, and to be focused on one thing and one thing only. This class made me feel like I had some room to operate fully in. From the beginning of the semester to the end, I feel like I have expanded myself creatively especially with what I had done with the video essay in Unit 2. The laptop I had used ended up breaking down maybe a month or so afterward, but it was okay. From the first Unit to now, I undoubtedly believe that I have gotten better. In unit 1 I had used too much repetition and tried too hard for a joke, like the repetition I had in the first line. I had said, “As a kid growing up, as a kid does when growing up…”. I realize now how it didn’t really work for the tone of the essay, and I have grown since then. In my photo essay for unit 4, even though it wasn’t about something that happened to me, I used to have the habit of inserting my own humor into it. Unit 4 was really my first paper where I took it seriously. Even in the video essay it was based on, I had used the visuals to tell a joke (The Calvary Hill part). I have tried to limit my humor mostly because so many times in the past it ended up misguiding the direction I wanted the reader to go in. I have been more careful this time around, and have used it to better evolve my writing.
My grades are not the best, my attitude towards school isn’t what I think it should be, and I still have improvements to work on. I feel that in my personal writings, pacing is needing improvement. However I know that from what I’ve learned from this class, I will only get better. I also know that it will be quite hard to forget where that assistance came from.
