Alayna Culbertson
Midterm Reflection
English 2089
Week one was overwhelming as I started to learn the basics of a blog and articles. I enrolled in two different English courses that actually worked hand to hand together and helped me in both courses.Half-way through the semester and I can personally say I have learned a lot about writing as well as reading different types of articles and blogs. In the beginning I had no idea what to expect to learn from this course, I went in having no clue what I had ahead of me. I can say that within these first 7-8 weeks I have learned many skills that will help me in my future career as a psychologist. During this course as a writer I have been able to observe and learn from not only my teacher but my fellow students as well.I am more confident in my writing and my knowledge as to what it takes to be a writer as well as how to be a reader.
Our first main project in this class was our profiles for the Activist. I had a good idea of what a profile was, but I wasn’t sure how to make one about someone else. I was able to make an individual profile about myself fairly easily however I had trouble with writing about someone else. I wasn’t sure where to start or what to even write about. I found the readings about audience and the examples of profiles very helpful as it gave me a sense of what to expect my final piece to look like. I found it very helpful that we knew who our audience was which is what pushed me to do a subject that out audience often times overlooks and doesn’t know much about, which is why I chose my profile to be about the advising office, specifically my advisor Lindsey Koertiz. When I came up with my plan as to how I was going to put my profile together, I was lost as to what was I going to ask my advisor and what do the students want or need to know. That is when I looked back on previous profiles we looked over and got inspiration and ideas from them. I asked myself what the motive was I had that gave me the idea for advising, and that was to inform students and give sort of a spotlight to the advising office and help students know what they do. This helped me finish my profile by observing and asking the appropriate questions to my advisor.
After posting my profile we had a speaker come into class that helped me get a better understanding of what grabs an audience’s attention and what will make my blog posts interesting and stand out. I learned what gets the most attention in the media. This not only I felt was important for writers but business starters as well. Anyone that wants attention drawn to their work on the internet could find this useful, I know I did. I was able to ask myself “What is it that will really grab a viewer’s attention to my article?”
Now learning what a genre was, was the hardest to grasp on to out of everything so far. Going into that lesson, the only thing that I could think of was the term of a music genre such as pop or rock. I found the articles, especially “Genre in the Wild”, very helpful as to understanding what genre was. I learned an overall definition from this article that not only goes with music styles but anything in the world. The graphs and comics in the article helped me relate more to the term genre. I was able to connect those to what the speaker said about a reader’s attention span. This helped me apply what I learned to my work in the group photo caption genre project.
Working as a team is important not only in school but in a job especially a career. The photo caption project taught me how to work effectively in a group and how to make work equally spread out amongst other coworkers. While at times I found it difficult I feel that this was a good first step into working in groups and helped us learn. We were able to connect what the speaker had told us about audience to what we wanted to edit about our photo caption list. We were able to get ideas like ordering our pictures and topics as well as how to shorten captions to only what is relevant to the picture.We also found it helpful getting our fellow classmates’ input about our work and what should revise.
I also think it showed us what community was which also was shown in the article, “The Concept of Discourse Community.” I feel that this helped us think about what is important and relevant to the audience. When creating any kind of business or blogpost, you have to think of what the purpose is and who am I wanting to reach out to. What is the intended audience and what am I wanting them to take from my writing? I also feel that the article helped me see what is not relevant enough to talk about and what isn’t necessary.
As I said previously, week one of this semester I was completely lost, and I can confidently say that I am excited to see what the second half of this semester has in store for my education. I had no idea how to even create a blog post or what to even write about.I did not know what a genre was or even what a photo caption was besides a caption on Facebook or Instagram.I have learned a lot within the past two months that I find very helpful and any student could find helpful while in college. As a writer, my skills have advanced, and I have learned new ways to write.
