So… What Did I Learn This Semester?

Being the first English course I ever took in college, undoubtedly I was met with many concerns and questions about what I would learn from this class. I thought that I didn’t have anything to learn; I had been told my entire life that I was a great writer, but nothing would prepare for the skills I learned in this semester. I began considering things I had never known existed, rhetorical terms meant nothing to me until this course, and I am glad that I learned them, as they have enhanced my writing in unimaginable ways. 

The first piece I wrote was my Literacy Narrative. I remember writing this and how we had just learned about the rhetorical triangle, and I made it my mission to perfect the way in which I wrote my essay to tailor it to my audience, which was my professors. The genre of my essays for the most part were the same: standard academic writings based on novels. I remember being confident in my paper, and I thought that this class was going to lack challenge for me, and I thought that my writing already exceeded the standards of college writing. This was not only naive of me, but it also stopped me, for a while, from progressing in writing. This essay didn’t really require any collaboration, and I think it was my best sounding piece of writing because it allowed me to freely use my own ideas. I was able to use better vocabulary and syntax because I didn’t have to worry about integrating sources and making connections, it was purely what came out of my head. I think in terms of addressing my topics and not using too much summary, my regards towards my audience for my essays, especially my Exploratory Essay, were pretty valid. 

My Exploratory Essay is an essay where I think exigence came into account more than ever. Since we were prompted to choose from the short stories, it was important that I chose something that I felt passionate about, so I could sell my claim. This is also where my writer’s purpose came into account, the purpose was no longer to inform people on how I felt about a painting, but it was to prove to my audience that my claims were valid. I had to figure out the best way to summarize my story, because I had to take into account that some members of my audience may not have read the story, while also avoiding too much plot summary, and at the same time using each quote in a way that would enhance my essay, rather than using random ones just to take up space. I had to learn how to take parts of the story that added to my claim and thoroughly analyze them in respect to Freudian concepts, something that proved to be very difficult when some of the concepts were extremely complex and difficult to explain. The Exploratory Essay is also were peer reviews and collaboration were the most helpful. At that point in the semester, many of my classmates were confused over the same topics as I was, and since we were grouped with people who were doing the same story as us, it became easy to combine our ideas to enhance our understanding of the story and how the concepts applied to it. Working together with people while working on the same thing was much more beneficial than trying to figure out the deeper meaning of the stories on my own, and I think that it made my essay the best that it could have been. 

I think what helped me most in this semester of learning how to write on a college level were the grammar sessions that we had. I began the semester believing that since my essays were all the same type of essays, academic papers, that they would have the same structures and I would write them all in the same way. I could not have been more wrong. For some papers, I had to take a stance on things, like in the Literacy Narrative, where I had to explain something from my point of view. Other times, I was taking a psychoanalytic stance, and analyzing a story rather than implementing my own opinions. I also had to consider that my stance could be used to make my audience think a certain way. My stance on my Exploratory Essay could make my audience agree or disagree, or allow them to analyze stories the same way that I did. 

The last essay I did was the Critical Research Analysis. This paper, in my opinion, helped my grow the most as a writer academically. This was an entire new way of writing that I had never experienced before: writing research papers that weren’t about something science-related was uncharted territory for me. Also, I had never known what a database even was until this semester, let alone how to use them. This essay forced me to explore new types of sources and to learn how to cite them, which I know will be extremely beneficial for me in the future. The collaborative aspect of this essay was also extremely helpful, and I really enjoyed the library sessions that taught us how to cite things appropriately and search them as well. The genre of my paper changed a little, it was no longer a persuasive essay, it transformed into something that felt more real. Writing the CRP felt like I was writing with a bigger purpose than analyzing a story, and I owe that to the fact that I chose my own topic. I was able to take my own opinions on a story and apply them to a bigger picture, while taking real psychoanalytic concepts and applying them to real people instead of characters.  My experience in the FIQWS writing class has been the most enriching of my first semester in college, and I believe that all of my successful papers in the future will be because of the skills I learned in this course. The rhetorical situation, which is something that I had never even thought about before college, has become one of the most vital aspects of my writing, and I have seen myself apply it to papers that I write in other classes. I have learned how to consider every aspect of it and tailor the way in which I write my papers to it, and it has made my writing much better than when I started, and I will continue to apply these skills to all of my papers in the future.