Stephanie Rhiannon Freel

English 10800 – Fall 2010

December 12, 2010

Semester Reflection

One of the many things I was always told about college while still in high school was that it
would be a learning experience like no other I would ever have again in my entire lifetime. That always
struck me as a rather silly observation—of course you would learn more in college. That is the entire
purpose of secondary education, after all. However, now that my first semester at Purdue University is
drawing to a close, I have found that those warnings I was given were grossly misstated. The people
who gave me those heads-ups were not wrong, of course. They just completely understated exactly
how much I would be learning.
Of my fairly challenging class schedule this first semester, the class I feel I learned the most in
would probably have to be my English 108 Composition class. I am not merely saying that because this
reflection is for that class; I sincerely mean it. Japanese this semester was mostly a review of what I
have learned in years passed, my GS class was just a scholarship requirement, and all I learned from
Math is that I am really, truly not strong in my mathematical skills. Ethics would be a close second to
English, as I did learn much both in terms of actual knowledge and basic wisdom. However, I have
already forgotten many of the facts I learned in Ethics, whereas I have retained both the factual
knowledge and self-awareness gained from English, for the most part.
The things I learned about myself from English may not be as deep or spiritual as the self-
discoveries from Ethics, but the insight I gained is certainly pivotal to my future success as a college
student. One of the things I was happiest to discover was that technology is actually quite an important
factor to be considered in more advanced writing. In most high school work, typing up your essay in
Word and printing it off is about the most interaction you get with technology. Sometimes you might
get to do a Powerpoint, which most people do terribly because they are never taught how to do it
properly. However, in English 108, nearly every assignment we were given involved the use of
technology in some degree or another, in most cases reaching beyond just using a word processor. My
personal belief is that all compositional work that makes use of words should be considered legitimate
writing, regardless of where that writing appears or if it is even written, text-based word. My belief
seemed gleefully reaffirmed by Projects #2 and #3, for which I did a analytical video about a Red Hot
Chili Peppers song and a series of Facebook posts, respectively. I believe it is important for people to
develop some skill in more technologically-based composition because the world as a whole is rapidly
becoming more and more absorbed in technology. It may not be long before the classic, print-based
format of writing becomes obsolete, and as sad as that is, we have to be able to keep up or our writing
while go to waste.
One of the most important lessons I have learned in one that I will do my best to impress onto
you, reader, because this lesson resulted from one of the most common problems I have ever run into
among students. You have probably heard of the evil of procrastination more times than you can count,
but I can assure you (if you have not already discovered this yourself) that there is a very good reason
everyone keeps harping on about it. If I were even slightly less academically motivated this semester,
procrastination would have absolutely buried me. I am not exaggerating. My simple inability to
motivate myself to actually work on my projects in a timely fashion made my life exceedingly more
difficult this semester. You know how people frequently talk of pulling all-nighters and ruining their
sleep schedule over school? Procrastination is the cause.
One cause of my procrastination this semester specifically is that I found myself guilty of
overestimating my abilities. Barely a year ago, I could procrastinate on all of my essays and projects
and still easily net a good A, if not an A+. Most people can't do that anyway, no one can get away with
that sort of thing in college. I started almost everything last minute, working all night on essays and
projects for English and other classes alike (though the projects for English were exceedingly more
stressful to do last minute than my work for other classes). On Projects #2 and #3 of English 108, I not
only had to stay up all night working towards their completion, but had to skip my earlier classes to
ensure the projects got done. Many students skip classes, especially in their first year of college, but let
me assure you I am not one of those students under normal circumstances. I am one of those students
who forces themselves to make it to class even when ill or absolutely exhausted. I knew from the
middle of the semester (after the final drop date, though, of course) that I was going to fail my Math
class and still went to class as frequently as I could. I am also a perfectionist, which made my
procrastination even more stressful.
If there is one singular thing I want you to remember of my words, reader, let it be this: If you
value your sanity, do NOT procrastinate. Doing the work may be boring and you may have other
things, important or not, that you would rather focus on, but get a decent start on your work anyway.
Force yourself. Leave reminders for yourself. Withhold something you enjoy from yourself until you
reach a certain level of progress in completing your work. Ask your friends to help out by scolding you
and nagging you to work if you have to. If you procrastinate, you may still get lucky and get a good
grade on the project like I did, but think: you could have earned an even better grade if you would have
started even one or two days earlier. It is not worth the excessive stress to wait. Do you want a good
look at what NOT to do? Take a peek at the rough drafts of my three English projects this semester. It is
honestly a bit embarrassing to show them, but if it helps to get my point across I will deal with the
shame. I suppose I can consider it reinforcement of my own personal “do not procrastinate” lesson.
Now that that rant is out of the way, I would like to share with you some of the other useful
tidbits I picked up from this class. One of the things I did not expect to find out was what actually
needs to go into a successful portfolio. I had always assumed a portfolio was more or less only useful
for artists and that it was just a collection of your work to show potential employers. While it is
primarily a showcase of your work, there is more to it than just slapping all your stuff together in a nice
package and calling it a day, and artists are not the only people who use portfolios. Most portfolios
actually require you have reflections over or commentaries of your work. Employers and other viewers
of your portfolio do not just want to know what you did; they want to know why you did those things
and how you think it turned out for you. I knew I personally tend to like to know those same things, but
I just thought that I had a particular obsession with details. Clearly, however, I am not the only one. I
feel fortunate I tend to give explanations anyway, for I am more used to the sort of reflective work
sought out in portfolios.
With that said, however, my obsession with details is not always a good thing. While most
valuable readers are looking for a close attention to detail, many readers are also easily bored. It is very
important to effective writing that you are able to express a good deal of information as briefly as
possible. The detail and information part I have quite a bit of skill with; my brevity, however, still
needs work. For example, this reflection specifically was only required to be five hundred words long.
By the time you have finished reading the reflection, you will have read exactly one thousand, nine
hundred and thirty words. That is not encouragement to stop reading, of course, and I sincerely hope
you have enjoyed reading this, but my point still remains: I may have learned that good writing is brief
but informative, but that lesson seems to still have yet to fully sink in. I intend to continue working on
developing my ability to say things briefly and concisely, but like any other twelve-step program, the
first step to breaking yourself of written rambling is admitting that there is indeed a problem.
Going above and beyond the requirements of an assignment is not always a sign of rambling,
however. Another assignment on which I went over the word requirement was the earlier mentioned
series of Facebook posts, which served as a commentary about the U.S.'s Fair Use policy and its effect
on creative works directly derived from other creative works. We were told that, for the best results, our
commentaries should be a total of approximately two thousand to twenty-five hundred words long.
Mine was closer to three thousand. Despite this, however, it is the best grade I got in the entire class,
and I feel as though it is the best composition I did for the class. I did not have to do nearly as much
work on it as I did Project #2, and though I am proud of my Project #2, I do not feel as though it was as
high-quality work as Project #3. For Project #2, my topic was so specific that it was difficult to find
sources directly confirming my points, and the greater effort needed to make a high-caliber video was
more than what I could put into it with the limited time I left myself. Project #3, however, is unique in
that I posted it on Facebook as a basic rant to all of my friends that eventually developed into my own
search for answers. Though the premise seems simple, it did require some work, but not more than I
could manage effectively. I view Project #3 as my best work because it has the most unique context, the
most persuasive writing, the most interesting tone, the most audience-targeted writing, and, despite
going over the recommended word limit, the most balanced combination of detail and brevity. If you'd
like to see for yourself, you can find it in the “Project #3” section of my portfolio as well as on my
Facebook page.
Although I have learned much about writing and composition this semester, I have much to
learn still. Though I am sad to leave English 108 behind, I am excited to end the semester and move on
to new classes and subjects. Hopefully these future classes will do as much to improve my writing
capabilities as much as this course has. It is important for anyone to continue developing their writing
skills, but due to my dreams of becoming an author, it is increasingly critical that I perfect my
compositional abilities as much as possible. I hope that, with some luck and more hard work, all this
development will be to use writing fantastic stories.