Joe Kavanaugh
Stefen Britt
ENG 111
12 December 2014
The Big Picture
This course has taught me a lot. It's been a great way for me to come out of my shell a little and actually talk to people. Despite my sometimes opinionated blabber mouth, I'm actually really shy and reserved a lot of times when it comes to people, and I half-heartedly planned on just going through the semester without saying anything at all really. But, the instructor took a rifle to that hot air balloon and within the first 2 weeks I was caught up in a group for reading and discussion. On top of that, I had to contribute an answer we had to give to the class, and that was slightly beyond unnerving. But out of it I managed to make a few new friends and began to branch out to other people. It kind of helped me not be so worried about college and begin to relax and try and tackle the real problems without worrying about the social ones.
I learned a lot as well. I learned to challenge my own opinion and question myself before I state something that I may regret. Even our wonderful vegan friend made me question my own beliefs for a moment. I also learned that even the craziest theories can be valid when you can have a mature discussion about them, such as my discussion with the instructor on, as my new found friends call it, "How South Park Saved America". The instructor also taught me a lot about people. When he first came in, he seemed like a lot of the sort of stereotypical younger English professor- timid, nerdy, a little scattered at times. But to watch him direct the class in discussion and to listen to his ideas and ways he presented them was to watch the difference between night and day. He transformed into this passionate speaker with some very quotable thoughts and opinions, especially when it came to one-on-one conversations about writers and also our own work. He taught me the error of my ways when it came to the focus on my essays and how to create and support a good thesis without straying away from it. He also taught me how to synthesize my own voice with the voice of the authors, instead of letting them do my work for me. It made me feel like I was getting my point across a little better and made it feel more like a conversation between them and myself, rather than me just mindlessly acting the puppet of a written ventriloquist act.
That being said, my beginnings with AMS were rocky at best and downright hellish at worst. I didn't have my own voice in it. I made the authors of my sources do the work, with me simply regurgitating their words. And I didn't have a clear thesis or any focus upon a thesis at all. Every incarnation of that essay (and there were quite a few of them) were a bit of a bane of my existence. It was extremely difficult to put my own voice in there when I had been taught to more let my sources control my essays in high school. But eventually I stumbled my way into finding a voice for myself, and it felt great when I did. The essay was challenging and my instructor did not let me off easy, telling me in several incarnations of it that I was still lacking a voice.
Overall, I feel really confident that I learned a lot and will be better prepared for essays like that in the future. I feel a lot more comfortable with my writing in general, especially my source papers and opinionated papers, where I was more focused on just getting the information down and not synthesizing it to mean any more than a 3 page list of facts. I feel that through our essays and discussions and one-on-one meetings, I grew as a person, and look forward to moving on to more papers and ideas like this to grow even more. That being said, I still have a lot more confidence in my fictional/poetic writing than I do in my factual/synthesis writing. But I definitely feel like they're on a closer level than ever before.
