To Be Read in the Future 

From my first attempt at introducing myself in a letter to Professor Carr, I felt self-conscious and hesitant in writing it. This was not a new feeling. I’ve had many occasions to write over more then the average freshman’s years, but, even as a mature student, I still felt the lack of confidence when it came to exposing my thoughts, experience(s) or even the results of my research.

Before this course I had learned to write an essay, just not in a way that explained the reasons for why things are written the way they are.  

I had to write a biographical essay as part of the entrance process for the University of Winnipeg. They don’t have the SAT or any other tests for college admission in Canada. What they do have (in my experience) is a series of references along with two essays. 

The first essay was biographical and in the genre of education. An essay that is very similar to the literary narrative of this course.  It covered the writer’s entire educational experience up to the decision to apply for college. The second was a two-part essay. The first half was in regard to what you were hoping to gain from a college education as well as the college experience and how you see yourself as you graduate. 

The second half was what you thought you might be doing in ten years time. How your life would be different or the same in ten years, and, what kind of person you are trying to become regarding career, family, or even what you might envision yourself as a member of society. It seemed a bit much for an eighteen-year-old to fathom, but that was the program. 

I’m sure from those two essays the UofW powers that be could glean my abilities in writing and vocabulary as well as at what level of sophistication and self-awareness I was bringing to the school. I’m sure those essays said a lot more about me then I realized I was saying. 

I wish I had had a course like this one before that experience.

I found that even through my initial anxieties, that each assignment had a purpose and subsequent assignments built on the foundation of the previous. Starting with smaller steps, writing a few words about oneself, and then writing about a personal experience. In the expository essay, we wrote about something we had an interest in and we ended the projects by expanding that interest into a fully researched paper that looked at both the pros and cons in an argumentative aspect of your chosen topic. 

We employed group work and group discussions in this class and we would share our strengths and weaknesses in our assignments with our peers.  There was also the online version of peer critique.  I found this type of exercise to be both a treasure of information as well as a social exercise in expression and questioning whether it was about my own work or something that a classmate was working on. I could ask about how something I found well done was achieved or point out a missing comma.  It was a great way to build confidence.

As each project was assigned I learned a new facet to the construction and the “bones” of writing. The course learning objectives were reviewed for each essay and that helped to clarify those aspects of how it was building on what had come before. The rhetorical situation became more sophisticated and made for even better outcomes. Everything fit together like a puzzle and in the end, the picture, now formed in its entirety, brought a feeling of successful accomplishment and a new found confidence in having learned how to properly build on a solid foundation.

I have learned new skills in expressing my writing through different media.  We had each produced and presented a PowerPoint version of our argumentative essays and each took questions and answered as best we could.  Now I believe I could perform this type of presentation without the anxiety I had just when writing a one-page letter to one person.

This web site for our course portfolio is something else that I had not had experience with prior to this class.  At the outset, I had technical difficulties I was not able to conquer on my own. Since we had worked together so often in class I had no hesitence when talking to a couple of classmates and getting the answers I needed to create this site.  I feel this as an accomplishment both in confidence and in a new skill.

Maybe this level of writing was not the goal of my first foray into college, but I was accepted and in writing this I have this feeling that I would just love to go and read what that younger me had written. I can’t recall anything I had said. I had no structure or formal understanding of how to put my thoughts on paper. I would like to read about what I thought I would be doing ten years after writing those essays. I know I couldn’t have imagined moving to New York and working on a second degree at CCNY.

I’m sure those essays should be read in their future and I certainly would like to read all the component of this course portfolio ten years from now. What a difference this course had made in me not only in my abilities and confidence, but I also know that I will have an easier time in other classes and not dread either handing my paper in for grading nor dreading getting back the graded paper. It’s a good feeling.