Final Portfolio and Reflection

Final Portfolio:

Unit 1: Education Narrative Revised

I made small revisions to my unit 1 assignment. It was mostly just following my teacher’s comments and fixing grammar. Things like fixing incorrect words and punctuation. I also added a title and added a heading to my essay. I think my education narrative was pretty good, or at least on the right track seeing as how all my feedback was grammatical errors. I incorporated the feedback because fixing the grammar would just make it better than it already was.

Unit 1 Assignment:

Lack-Luster Education

It’s the third grade and we are preparing for the state tests. There are students surrounding me in almost every direction, all of them with notebooks and pencils out. The teacher is going over the structure of the state test and what things we should work on first. I wasn’t a big fan of the state test at the time, to the point where even the smallest things would trigger me. The smell of coffee in the room triggered me, but it didn’t bother me as much since the smell did remind me of pancakes for some reason. The lights on the ceiling that would occasionally flicker added more fuel. My desk that would screech across the floor when I moved even slightly added even more water to an already filled glass. Having the sun in my eyes just made things even worse. All these different things bothered me little by little, but in the end, the thing that caused it all was the State Test. The State Test seemed like the only thing on everyone’s mind, even the teacher’s. Everything we learned was just thrown out the window just for this one test. Even the other subjects like science and social studies were paused in favor of state test prep. Seeing as science was my favorite subject at the time, that really pissed me off.

The enjoyment of my school life diminished as school shifted its focus to the State Test. All of the fun activities that we used to do were replaced with concentrated studying on English and Math in order to improve our chances of scoring high. Now that I think about it, this may be the start of my disinterest in English. But above all else, we studied hard on how to take the test. I never enjoyed learning how to take a test. I would rather just learn about the material on it. It’s not like I don’t get it. Test scores are important for schools, but it’s a different story if you are more concerned with that than the student’s education itself. Being forced to take countless practice tests while reading and writing everyday fueled my hate for the English subject. I will never forget the stress I felt while preparing for the state tests, because that same stress is something that stuck with me throughout my school life. I know all schools don’t do this, but if it is a school that does, then you are going to burn out your students faster than the tests will, especially at a young age. If you want better test scores, then actually teach the children subjects.

It’s like these schools don’t take the students into consideration. Not everything should be about having good test scores to make yourself look better. I’ve even heard that some schools purposefully encourage people to apply just to reject them and make their acceptance rate lower so people can think they are a “hard to get into” school. At this point students just seem like tools to better the school instead of schools being an important place to better the students. I can still remember how big the celebration was when my elementary school became a Blue Ribbon school. That is a big achievement, but at the cost of so much stress to students at a young age and a lack of proper education since some of it was cut off in order to make progress on test scores. I also remember how things were like after the state test. Learning felt so lackluster, like the main story was completed so the rest of it is just filler. I was so bored of just sitting there, listening to unenthusiastic teachers who don’t even try to appeal to the students anymore. That time of my life was truly unfortunate. It was one of my worst experiences at my young age, and a big demotivation for me.

The whole idea of a test is to evaluate the student, to see what they know and what they’ve learned. But instead of getting a proper evaluation, it felt more like we were getting vague answers to the test, like we had just enough knowledge to get the best scores. If I get a good score on a test without actually learning anything then what is the point? I’m basically just cheating at that point. It won’t even feel like I progressed in school, and worse, I won’t actually know what progress I’ve made in my education. What really sucked about it was that my elementary school had a great building that looked like a great place to learn. It was a brightly colored building with great classrooms, a clean bathroom, working water fountains, and a great atmosphere overall, but it’s wasted on that school. I feel like most of my learning was outside of school or in my extracurriculars. My middle school wasn’t a good one either, but I feel like I learned way more in that school, like they wanted us to know as much as possible, but in its own way that wasn’t fun either. That one felt more like they were trying to cram all the information down my throat before I left the school and if I didn’t understand it then there was something wrong with me. But some of the teachers did realize that they were going too fast and did slow down for us, so that was kinda nice. The test scores weren’t the best or anything but it felt like I came out knowing more of what I should have. That school definitely had more energy than my elementary school, even if it didn’t have as much of a budget.

I’m not one to go on a tangent like this about school, but I never really had fun with school after the early stages. It just felt boring having to read a lot of boring stories or do homework when I could be doing something much more enjoyable, especially when I knew I would have to come into an unenthusiastic session of class the next day. That mindset turned me into a not ok student. But I believe things could have been different if I had a different learning experience. I’ve had classes that were fun, where we did fun activities or had really fun teachers. It made me want to participate, made me want to interact more so I could have more fun. But most of my learning experience seems to be the same old uninterested teachers either working for the money or just trying to make the school look better. If only things were different, I could be enjoying school and learning way more than I am now. I wouldn’t have this feeling of worry or this growing disinterest for anything related to school. My perspective on education could’ve been a complete 180, and that seems to interest me more than school.

Unit 2: Reflective Annotated Bibliography Revised

My unit 2 needed a lot more revisions than my unit 1. I received a lot of feedback about citation errors. I still have a way to go when it comes to proper citation. I went ahead and incorporated those changes because incorrect citations can actually be a big deal. I also received feedback about small grammar and spelling issues, so I incorporated those because they didn’t hurt to fix. The last feedback I received was feedback about my source entries. When talking about my course entries, I failed to talk about why those authors chose the genre that they did. This was an assignment that was linked to unit 3 which was all about genre, so I thought it was important to incorporate that feedback as it would make it easier to understand the reasons for choosing a genre in unit 3.

Unit 2 Assignment:

Multiplayer Games Create Connections other than Wi-Fi

Video games are one of the cornerstones of our world. No matter where you are, video games will most likely follow. One of the most common forms of video games are multiplayer games. Multiplayer is an extremely popular genre in the world of games. Being able to play against other people, whether in person or online, and being able to hone your skills or make new friendships has always been something that gamers were fond of. In fact, multiplayer games are so popular that there are even people that find ways to make single player games into multiplayer ones. I myself am very fond of multiplayer games too as they gave me a new source of enjoyment and motivation. These games act as liaisons that allow players to connect to each other, and it is through those connections that friendships and communities are born. Since so many connections can be made through these games, is it possible that these games benefit our social skills?

 I am a fighting game player. I absolutely love fighting games. I like to be competitive, improve my skills to try and be the best, though I am always miles away from that goal. Every time I play a fighting game and win, I just can’t help but think “I have gotten a little bit better at the game” or “I have improved once again.” It makes me feel like all my time practicing has been worthwhile, like a mini confidence booster. Of course, fighting games aren’t the only games I play, but they definitely have a special place in my heart for how much they’ve helped me grow. I have made an abundance of connections through fighting games. Most of them haven’t been long term, but even just those small connections have made an impact on me. Improving my skills, meeting new people, these fighting games have been a large part of my life, but they aren’t the only thing changing me. The people that I’ve met through these fighting games have brought about an even bigger change. I am undoubtedly an introvert. I don’t really talk to people nor do I try to talk to them. I like doing my own thing or just communicating with the small group of friends I have. But once I experienced the joy of meeting people with the same strong interest and thirst to improve in fighting games, I started to open up. I started seeking connections, looking for more people who I can talk to, people who I can fight against in these games and learn from. Before I realized it, I started talking to people outside of the games, hoping they would also be interested in it, but even if they weren’t, there were some that I still talk to even now. I have improved as a person by leaps and bounds, and it’s all thanks to the connections I’ve made with people through these games that we all had interests in.

Though there was growth, it was never conscious. I never really sat down and thought “I’ve really improved socially.” I never realized how much I had grown until now, and with that realization came a big question, “If I could grow this much, how much have the people I’ve been talking to grown? How much have my friends grown? How much has every gamer grown?” But trying to figure that out would definitely take too long, so I thought of a simpler question to answer, “What benefits do these games have on our social skills?” It’s a small question, only 10 words, but it isn’t an easy one to answer, at least not without research. I expect to find a lot of social benefits when it comes to these games in my research. All I ever hear when it comes to masterpieces is about how much they have changed people’s lives, or the emotions that it brought out in people. I hope there are many things to gain from these games, but if the negatives tend to out way the positives then I might be a little disheartened, but I wouldn’t give up since they have personally changed me.

Fishman, Andrew. “Video Games are Social Spaces: How Video Games Help People Connect.” JCFS Chicago. https://www.jcfs.org/response/blog/video-games-are-social-spaces-how-video-games-help-people-connect

Andrew Fishman is a social worker who also runs a support group called “Level Up: A Group for Gamers.” This support group for teen gamers who converse with other teen gamers about how video games have impacted their lives. Fishman is also a firm believer that video games can be used to improve social skills. Fishman states, “Online video games can allow players to talk to others and make friends at their current ability level even when they are not emotionally or physically able to leave their homes. This can help build the skills and confidence necessary to try it in-person.” Though they aren’t communicating face to face, video games still give children the opportunity to communicate with other people. This allows them to improve their communication skills and gain confidence from talking to others. Fishman even does research of his own using past studies and even his own support group to help support this. He uses the results of two researchers’ studies to talk about the types of messages players talk send to each other, being socio-emotional messages and task-oriented messages. He also goes over how video games create safe places for vulnerable people to communicate with each other. His research supported the fact that children playing video games yields more positive results than negative, as they are able to communicate with others even when they aren’t physically next to each other.

This article is exactly what I was looking for. It really shows the positivity spread by video games. Through communication, children are able to gain skills and confidence needed to converse and interact with people in person. This is something I heavily agree with and something I want to support as a gamer. I am introverted. I know the feeling of not being able to talk to others. The nervousness, the awkwardness, I know all of it. These games, that allow you to interact with anonymous people, though it does sound dangerous saying it like that, really lets you get into deep conversations about the things you love. These games are like a key for me and many others. They allow me to interact with people about these games that we players are so fond of. Now that I have found people with common ground, I am able to make more friends than I ever thought I would. Over 70% of the friends I have made have been made through some kind of video game connection. These games have even led me to communities where I was able to make even more friends. 

Andrew Fishman, as a person who runs a group for young gamers to converse with each other, knows way more about these benefits than I do. The social group that he runs is something I would love to experience and is something I hope many others can experience. His social group is a perfect place to interact with other people and grow your social skills. The easy part is that you all will have something in common, that being your interest and love of video games. I think he chose to write an article because it was the best way to convey his research for him. Articles are also one of the biggest sources of information. He wanted to spread the word that gamers conversing among themselves is a good thing and that he has a social group exactly for it if you want to get started.

McGonigal, Jane. “SuperBetter-Or How to Turn Recovery Into a Multiplayer Experience.” Reality is Broken : Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change The World. https://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs047n/readings/Reality_is_Broken.pdf

Jane McGonigal is a world-renowned game designer and author. She advocates using technology to channel positivity into the world. Jane’s Graphic Novel, “Reality is Broken,” is about how video games are beneficial to people and how they help us improve ourselves. She uses psychology and sociology to describe how video game designers know what makes us as gamers happy and how they incorporate it into their work to create the great games that we all play today. The stories on how these games are made and the different impacts that they have had on people are intriguing. In one of the stories, she talks about how she got a concussion while writing her book and experienced moods of depression during her recovery because there was no progress and she couldn’t do anything that would make her strain her brain. But she decided to stay optimistic and try to get better. While she was reading and practicing three strategies to get better, she thought “these three strategies sound exactly like what you do when you’re playing a good multiplayer game.”(McGonigal 135) That later inspired her to create the game “SuperBetter”, a game that turns your recovery into a multiplayer game. This game was a game that was set on helping people in recovery improve faster, or at least feel better about themselves. McGonigal herself couldn’t tell when there it was actually improving her condition, but she did state this, “When my allies joined the game, I finally felt like they really understood what I was going through, and I never felt quite so lost in the fog again.”(McGonigal 141) She was able to make a connection and feel better about herself during the recovery that put her mood down. She then later published the rules on her blog and gave it the title “SuperBetter.” She used the idea of entering an alternate reality and turned it into a multiplayer game that can help people during recovery.

This book was especially inspiring. This is something I didn’t expect to come across while researching. I was mostly thinking of competitive games when it came to interactions, but there can also be interactions made with games made to help people. McGonigal’s game “SuperBetter” not only aimed to help you get through your recovery but also allowed you to gain a connection to people who are also going through what you are going through. I am actually stunned at how I have never seen this. No matter what multiplayer games you play, they really allow you to connect to someone who is similar to you in a sense, whether it be your interests, or your situations. Social connections themselves cna be a recovery of sorts and help you in a bad situation.

I never really thought that a Graphic Novel could give me information that I not only needed to support my claim, but just never knew I was curious about until I fulfilled my curiosity. I believe McGonigal chose a Graphic Novel because she wanted to tell a story. She wanted to tell a story about her life and her reasons for making the games she did. It just goes to show how many genres are out there that have the type of information you are looking for. McGonigal is a great writer and her work not only promotes her positivity but also helps people learn to spread that positivity. The multiplayer games that she makes really help promote the fact that the social interactions you achieve through games are beneficial, especially in her case.

 Martinez, Esteban, director. “FGC: Rise of the Fighting Game Community.” Youtube, uploaded by Hold Back to Block, 5 Jul. 2016, https://youtu.be/AkdCdrzj7Ik

The Fighting Game Community, also known as the FGC, is one of the biggest gaming communities ever, with fighting game enthusiasts joining from all over the world. FGC: Rise of the Fighting Game Community is a documentary that dives into the competitive scene of fighting games and the motivation and feelings of the players that make up that competitive scene. These are fighting game players that are enthusiastic about fighting games, whether it is players that spend their time creating and honing techniques in practice mode or players that work hard to get better and compete in tournaments. These players connect with each other, whether it be through tournament matches, practice, or just running into each other while attending an event for their specific fighting game. These gatherings show the true connection and interactions between fighting game players. This documentary introduces people from all over the FGC, from fighting game players like Lord Knight to commentators like James Chen to even game developers like Seth Killian. Speaking of Seth Killian, he is someone who has years of experience with fighting games. He’s honed his skills, he’s seen the best of the best fight it out in tournaments, he’s someone who has made a lot of connections through fighting games. As someone who has experienced so much with this community, he knows just how many people you can meet through games, and a great place in the past to meet those people were arcades. Arcades are a legacy for fighting games. They are what would be written in textbooks if video games had those. When it came to early gaming, everyone would grab their quarters and run to arcades. When it came to fighting games in arcades, that was the place to be. Some of the best fighting game players grew up and got better through arcades. Arcades were so impactful that companies made controllers for current generation consoles based off of arcade stick layouts, and some players couldn;t play fighting games unless it was with those controllers. Killian, who grew up with arcades, stated that “arcades were a perfect illustration of that because a lot of those people became friends, a lot of them became enemies, but  it also engendered a certain kind of respect and a certain kind of attitude because you were sharing a physical space with them.”(Killian 14:47-14:59). Arcades were the first form of competitive play in fighting games. Players had to sit right next to each other and spend money in order to play against each other. They would spend more money and rematch over and over, and in that was a connection slowly being nurtured.

This documentary was a fantastic watch. As a fighting game player, I really loved seeing a deeper look into the competitive scene, seeing the thought process of players, or how players were like during the early days of fighting games. Watching this also made me think about just how big my connection grew thanks to fighting games. These games have introduced me to friends that I will never forget, and to even more fighting games that would later become some of my favorite games of all time. I’ve grown even fonder of fighting games and have gained an even greater motivation to get better at them. The world that these pros are experiencing, the world of fighting games tournaments and true competition is something I want to experience for myself. I just know that if I can reach there, I’ll gain even more connections and skill.

The director for this documentary, Esteban Martinez, filmed this beautifully. The many people he got in contact with to film this and the many events that he went to and showed in the documentary really amazed me. Maybe these were the connections he gained through fighting games. Either way, his work on this film is definitely greatly appreciated by not only me, but many of the fighting gamers that have seen his work. I think he chose to make a documentary because he wanted people to see the fighting game community. He wanted to show what these gamers look like, what the games they play look like, what tournament venues look like. What is a video game without video? I also believe making a documentary was the best choice to get his message out.

Multiplayer games are a very common thing so you would think that they don’t make that much of a social impact on people, but they make much more of an impact than I had originally thought. A lot of children play games at an early age, and a large group of them play multiplayer games. Thinking back on that, we interact with a lot of people early on in our lives, and the way we see those people interact with others or the way we interact with them ourselves is something that heavily shapes us. Something that did surprise me is the fact that gamers have a lot more options of interaction than I had originally thought. From face to face encounters in arcades to forums and online messaging systems provided by our gaming services, there are many ways to meet new people and interact with already established friends in the gaming world. We, as gamers, have opportunities to improve our social skills almost everywhere. I honestly find it crazy how I’ve never seen this before until now, and I’ve been using these services without any thought to it at all.

Learning all these things is beneficial not just to me, but to gamers everywhere. It is not an understatement to say that games are a big part of human culture, so if these games had a negative impact on us, then that would mean a loss for humanity. Of course there could be some negative impacts when it comes to interacting with people who rage in video games or just flat out want to spread negativity in a community, but the benefits and opportunities for growth outway that. You don’t even need to be a gamer to be honest. If you are someone that just wants to improve your social skills or wants to meet new people, multiplayer games are a way to open a gate to new people. And the best part is that these games branch far from just meeting people in game. These connections can lead you to youtubers, people to follow and interact with on twitter or other social media, discord servers filled with people to talk to and learn from, and much more. For all the gamers that enjoy competitive play or just playing fun games with other people, this is your chance to make new connections and not only grow as gamers, but as people. To all those looking for ways to improve themselves socially, give games a try. Not only can you meet new people, but you can find new interests, hobbies, and more ways to have fun.

This is how I feel about the project so far:

This was a really fun project. Doing the research, finding new information, all of it was very enjoyable. Finding good sources was difficult though, especially since they had to be different genres. I am happy that there were so many beneficial sources for my research and so many sources that promoted the benefits of video games. Seeing the negativity is something I expected but I expected to see a lot more. I saw almost nothing about the negativity of video games on people. It made me feel proud to be a gamer. I feel like I still need to work on my source entries though. I also need to work on my analysis. But for the most part this was a ten out of ten project.

Unit 3: Writing in a New Genre

We did not get the chance to revise our unit 3 assignments so all I can talk about is what I wish to revise if I had the chance. The only thing I would revise is the audio. When making the video, I noticed that the audio sounded really muffled. My skills in audio editing are very amateur, so the most I could do was clear it up a little. It would be best to re-record with better settings and a better environment. Of course, I would have to edit the video to match the new audio so it would probably take a while, but it would be worth it.

Unit 3 Assignment: https://youtu.be/tAcC-WK5Uzg

Artist Statement

I have always been a gamer. I have always been an introvert. Communicating with people was never my strong suit. Even friends I have now are people who took the initiative to talk to me first. Those friends then introduced me to more people, but the one thing we had in common at the time was that we were all gamers. But my in-person friends aren’t the only friends I have. I have also made several anonymous online friends, which sounds bad out of context but they were just people who are friends on gaming platforms that I contact in-case I want to fight them or need an extra teammate. So the thought came to me. These gaming platforms have built-in friend systems, some of the mobile games I play also have friend systems, plus all of my friends are gamers. These games are helping me make friends, so shouldn’t we all be making friends? It is literally so easy. Then another thought came to my mind, maybe my friends aren’t growing just because of these platforms. It is like I slowly got better at talking to people and connecting with others. Could these games be giving me the opportunity to improve my social skills? And so became the beginning of my research.

My purpose for doing this research and making this project was to spread the word. I wanted to let gamers know that the friend system they so commonly use is actually a great tool that can help them create even more friends in real life. All these chats that you have with players are really beneficial to you and your social skills. Making friends is easy when you have something to easily connect with them. Plus having such easy access can motivate them to try and make more friends. What better way to inform gamers about a simple, easy to access tool than with a simple, easy to access video. The best place for me to put my easy to access video is the most easy to access streaming service around, Youtube. Youtube is on the top 5 list for Gamer Resources. Gamers use Youtube a lot when searching for an answer in their games, so if I put my video on there, they are more likely to come across it. As for what the video itself is gonna be, it is going to be a short and sweet informative video. A short video that can get my point across is perfect for gamers since we switch from video to video a lot.

The genre has to be video, no questions asked. Something a gamer can watch while playing, something gamers don’t have to spend a lot of time on, and something they can still gain information from, these are the types of media gamers are looking for. That is why it has to be a video. A simple informative video is the best way for gamers to take in the information I want to provide them, and the best place for simple informative videos is none other than Youtube. When the video is right there at your fingertips, gamers are more likely to watch it. It just attracts them more knowing it’s something they don’t even have to focus on.

The process of making the video has to start with the script. This simple video is a voice over kind, so I need a script to base the video off of. The script don’t need to be too long or short, as long as it gets the point across it should be fine. I went over my R.A.B. and made a script out of it, taking parts that I want to talk about while removing things that I thought didn’t need to be in the video. From there I recorded the script, and re-recorded, and re-recorded. I’ve re-recorded the script so many times. From there I went into editing the recording, trying to make my voice sound smooth and clear. It didn’t turn out the way I hoped, but it still turned out pretty ok. Once I thought the script recording was okay for use, I started making an outline of the video. Using the script as a basis, I started to draw out what I wanted the video to generally look like in certain areas, and if I couldn’t draw it then I would write down a short description of what should be there. It was more like a storyboard than it was an outline. After that was complete came the hard part, the video editing. Grabbing a filling yet unnoticeable background, grabbing images and clips that I thought would be appropriate for that specific section, it was really tedious. I also had to go through and learn the tools and some tricks so I can get my video looking like the way I had it in my head. At the end of the day, it didn’t turn out exactly how I wanted it, but I think I got the video looking close to what my ideal vision looked like. It was definitely something I could be proud of.

I think the video turned out great. It wasn’t perfect but it was definitely good enough to suit my needs. I got down the general idea of a short, appealing video to attract gamers. If there is anything I wish I could have improved on a little bit more, it is definitely the mic. I didn’t have the best setup to make my voice as clear and smooth as possible, and my audio editing skills are worse than my video editing. It still turned out pretty decent but it is probably the weakest part of my video. This was definitely a difficult project to get done. My biggest problem, which I didn’t realize until the end, was rendering. I have learned that rendering speeds depend on how good your computer is, especially how good your Processor is, but I overestimated my laptop. With multiple crashes and a final render time of 4 hours, I managed to complete my project. So if there is something else I should improve on, it is getting a better laptop. Having something like this as a college project was really fun. This is the most creative a college project has been for me to date, and I really enjoyed working on this project. I really do hope that there will be more projects like this during my time in college.

Final Reflection:

This semester is one that I would consider to be a semester of growth for me. Throughout this semester, I have completed many writing assignments and read many pieces of text. Because of this I was able to grow as a writer and as a reader, but more importantly as a scholar. I have gained knowledge and learned lessons that I can apply not only to my other college courses, but to my life in general. 

When it comes to reading, I can’t really say I improved much. I was never really a reader in the past. I read things like comic books and the like, but I never read much literature. In previous English classes, they did have me read articles and essays in order to annotate and analyze them, but I never really read those seriously either. The most I would do is skim them or read the first couple paragraphs. Maybe it is because I never found anything they gave me interesting. But something I did learn about myself as a reader is that even if it isn’t interesting, when I seriously start reading something, I start doing something that I refer to as “mindless reading.” I read the text, but I am not focused on the words at all. It is like the text goes in one ear and leaves the other. I am reading it without retaining any information. Before I know it, I am halfway through the text. I end up having to reread the text in order to get the information I should have had. It is a really weird quirk that I should fix.

If there is anything that I think has improved in my reading, it is probably analysis and understanding. Things like “why did the writer choose this?” or “why did the writer add this here?” I started learning to read like a writer. This also allowed me to incorporate some of the writing techniques that other authors have used into my own writing to improve it. In a way, my growth as a reader is support for my growth as a writer. I don’t think it is a bad thing, but I just wish there was more to show for it.

I feel I have grown pretty well as a writer. This semester, I have completed a number of assignments. From narratives to bibliographies, I have done assignment after assignment, and through those assignments I feel that I have grown stronger as a writer. In the beginning of this semester, I had low self-esteem as a writer. I wrote a lot in my past English classes, but I never really felt any growth as a writer. I mostly just wrote for the sake of passing the class and never really looked twice. But this semester has changed my way of thinking about writing. I don’t think my writing has changed drastically or anything, but I think I’m now writing with more care and purpose put into my work. It not only improved my mentality about writing but also increased my self-esteem.

When it came to writing, I always tried to get it over with as soon as possible. I never had interesting topics in my previous english classes, so I quickly did my work and handed it in to get the grade. The moment I finished my draft, I would do a quick scan for spelling errors and hand it in. But this class has changed my whole perspective. The first draft isn’t meant to signal the finish line, but is meant to be the starting line. It’s meant to be the base of your ideas that you build your blocks off of. During class, we annotated “Maker’s Eye” by Donald Murray. It was about the process of revising your work and what writers had to go through to properly revise. I annotated one of the quotes that popped out to me. What I wrote was “I like this idea that the first draft is actually the starting line when it comes to writing. A lot of people, myself included, treat the first draft like we are already at the end.” This annotation describes what I learned as a writer, that the beginning of my work starts with the first draft. That is why it is called the first, because it is the first of many.

Another aspect that I came to think about differently is the revising process. I said before that the first draft is the base of the building blocks, well revision is how you build those blocks to get the most stable yet beautiful structure, and I only just realized this semester just how unstable my blocks have been in the past. When it came to revision in the past, all I ever did was spelling and grammatical errors. I never cared whether the writing was good or bad. Now, I have a whole new view. In order to see the good and bad of my writing, I need to be a stranger to it. I need to see it objectively, without love or hate toward my work. That way I can build my blocks off of the stable blocks and either support the unstable parts or completely break them down in order to support my other stable parts even more. In a way, this theory of blocks not only applies to revision, but my growth as a writer too. This class has added support to my unstable foundation and has now given me the capability to build a fantastic and strong structure. No wonder I don’t think my writing has changed much. Only my foundation has been stabilized. So what if my writing seems lack-luster now? It’s my responsibility to build the blocks and improve so my writing can truly shine.

I believe my biggest growth this semester is as a student. This class has constantly kept me on my toes with the work and has improved the way I see work and the way I do work. Being able to take things step by step, or getting my ideas out of the way and being able to revise my work and build off of it are great ways to get work done in an orderly fashion and also allows me to not stress over it. I am still making mistakes as a student, but I feel that I have made a big leap this semester. Now I just need to keep all of this to mind so I don’t lose all the progress I just made. This growth is not just growth as a student, but growth as a person, so losing it is bad, but there is still much more growing that I need to do.

I really learned a lot about myself as a student this semester. First off, this semester has confirmed one of my biggest curiosities, being whether I learned better in-person or online, and I am definitely an in-person learner. Comparing my online classes to my in-person, or even comparing last semester to this semester, I can clearly see the results of in-person compared to online learning. Being in a seat with other students around me and my objective right in front of my face is the perfect way for me to learn, no matter how much I don’t like school. I still tend to procrastinate, but it hase definitely greatly improved since my high school days. I still make occasional flaws, but I am starting to get my act together. Something else I learned is that the biggest factor when it comes to me doing assignments is my enthusiasm. I had a lot of really fun assignments this semester where I got to explore things I wanted to learn about or try. I don’t think any English class is ever going to let me make a Youtube video as an assignment. I thought it was really creative and even let me learn just how much changing genres can affect my writing. Plus I gained a new hobby of video editing. I have never done assignments this interesting, it made me want to do them. It was a change from the usual essay based on a topic the teacher gave us. Maybe more creativity is the key when it comes to how I want to learn. Put a twist on things so that it is always interesting.

This semester is one I will probably never forget, unless I hit the jackpot of semesters in the future. There have been many lessons that I have learned in this class that I have taken to heart and will probably use throughout my life. But this is only the beginning. The end of a semester is just the signal for an even bigger journey afterwards, so I hope I can improve on what I learned this semester while learning more in the semesters to come.