Prof. Jessica Penner | D304 | Spring 2022

James Vegas, Final Reflection

I was originally going to take creative writing years back but unfortunately it was always filled no matter the semester. With the Spring 2022 semester, I gotten the chance to take the course after all this time. As the class and the semester overall draws to a close, there’s so much I’ve learned about myself throughout each single one of the assignments completed within each week. For starters, as someone who’s in a writing major at city tech, the writing aspect wasn’t very difficult. With each assignment we did from start to finish, it made me think critically with each piece of work. With the weekly readings early in the semester we had to write about, I’ve enjoyed each story/poem that was provided for us to share our thoughts and feelings on openlab weekly. With these provided for us, they were the groundwork for the main assignments that we had to do. I believe I did almost all the work as well maybe except for one small critique opinion from one of the readings. As for the people in the class, they all seemed nice and their thoughts and viewpoints from the readings we’ve looked at. As for the cohort assignments, I honestly hated it after a few weeks in. The people in my group didn’t communicate well with us or had no conversations at all which made it very unpleasant when giving my analysis on their work. Some of them didn’t follow the directions on what to do on the documents rubric, eventually they ended up not doing the work at all. The only people that really put effort on a consistent basis on the work and the cohort writings were my brother and me. This instance made me learn a good lesson, do not rely on other people in groups to get work done, it slows down progression and consistency with all parties involved. While I hope there’s change for the cohort stuff in the future, I won’t be there for the experience and change but I hope to learn from this when working in groups when it becomes an important manner in classes or jobs. As for the writings I did, I had no idea that all the topics to write gave me so many ideas to express when the final product was sent to openlab. Feedback from my peers and from you professor helped tremendously. It gave me much clearer thoughts on what to talk about compared to my other writing classes where I had to do multiple research assignments and step by step analysis work. I felt there was a sense of freedom with what I wanted to say that I couldn’t write about for years. I feel like when I spoke my mind on the poems, memoirs, and stories I wrote, it gave me more confidence to continue to write more things pertaining to the format this creative writing class had. Dare I say it was an overall fun experience from top to bottom. Were there moments where I wanted to fix some things? Sure, but at the end of the day, I’m glad I picked this time to take this writing course. To take a step back from my major writing classes for a few months and evaluate my writing from a different lens. It was unique to see my imperfections and strengths displayed from a different perspective. Perhaps this could lead to something more in the future if I put a lot of effort into it, as for now I can reflect on this creative writing class and say I did a very solid job overall.

1 Comment

  1. Tomas Biterski

    I enjoyed how James is going to be able to actually take something away from this class and use it to improve himself and help with his writing major.
    Something that James has learned is to take a step back from his major writing classes for evaluating his writing from a different lens.
    The writer has changed because he’s learned to no longer trust other people when working in group project. This makes sense to me because most people are lazy and when putting them in a groupwork setting it makes them lazier.
    James will probably use this class to hone his writing skills and help him in his professional career in the future.
    I would suggest the writer explain more about how this class could help him in his professional career but other than that his reflection was pretty good.

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