Final Self-Reflection and Creative Writing

Throughout the semester, I felt that the writing portion of this class was helpful because it allowed me to learn concepts that have made my writing stronger and become more aware of things when I am reading. Prior to this class, I would have a lot of difficulty when trying to comprehend what the main idea or purpose of a writing piece is, in turn I would also have a hard time expressing my own thoughts in as little words as possible. The three major assignments for this class helped me understand how to create, analyze, and verbally communicate ideas in various forms and aesthetics. For example, I found that even though the podcast assignment was a little difficult at first because of the communication aspect, I still learned how to express my ideas verbally within an area of study and time frame.
One of the learning objectives that I think I improved on the most is definitely maintaining a consistent and refined focus throughout the entire piece. I think I can admit that in the beginning of the course, I had a lot of trouble staying focused on a topic and would tend to write additional information that is not relevant to the essay. For example, in the first major assignment, The Eco-Literacy Narrative, Professor Carpenter pointed out that a lot of the details I provided were not needed and did not alter/strengthen the purpose of the paper. For example when I compared the description of the frames from the fire to the dementors from Harry Potter, that not only made me exceed the word limit, but also took the focus off the topic of air pollution. When I went in to revise this assignment, I worked on taking out excerpts like that to make it as concise and focused as possible. As I mentioned before, my partner and I had a lot of difficulty during our podcast assignment because we did not know how to make our topic specific. In fact, we had to change our topic mid-process because of how difficult it was to find resources for it and had to start from stage one all over again. However, when we came up with a new topic and site, it became a lot easier because we now had a specific area of study to research.
Another one of the learning objectives that I think I improved on in this course is choosing and critiquing different sources based on the author and the context it is speaking on. This objective is something that we focused a lot on this semester because I feel like in high school, we were never taught the difference between a reliable source versus one that is unreliable. When we were asked to do a class collaborative bibliography in the podcast unit, I think that really helped me because I was able to investigate different sources and judge its reliability based on the author, publisher, and the time it was released. In addition, I found it was really helpful to get a tutorial on how to get access to websites and resources that are provided by CCNY to find sources that are both reliable and reliable. This objective in general helped me evolve my writing in general because I have a better understanding on how to cite my sources correctly and also based my opinions on research that I know comes from a reliable source.
My perceptions on writing and reading in general have changed over the course of this semester in both personal and academic areas of studies. For example, I am a really big book reader and I found that this class has helped me dissect big excerpts of texts in order to get the main idea as easily as possible. In an academic setting, I also gained insight on the different tactics that writers use to get a certain reaction from the audience. For example, when we learned about advertisements and the professor mentioned how certain word choices and images are specifically chosen to connect with the audience enough so that they go on to further research or purchase an item. I was really surprised by that because I knew that writers use certain diction words, but the fact that even expressions and body language are used to make a point surprised me. My future point of view of interviews, advertisements, and tv commercials changed from that lesson.
All in all, the writing section of this class impacted me as both a writer and reader because I was able to learn different tools that will help me write effectively and analyze work with a bigger eye. I was able to understand that writing is a really important tool to develop our opinions on topics for both the world and sometimes even to ourselves. Writing is a really big tool that is used all over the world to preserve information for a long period of time to document our life-stories, experiences, and ideas.