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Lorin Stansel

Professor Hugetz

ENGL-1302. AHS05

11 May 2021

Reflective Essay

This entire year has been quite a complicated and stressful one, but despite that, this class

has shown me just how challenging college courses can be and the amount of responsibility

required to succeed in them. This entire semester of writing and doing projects has evolved

around my passion for art. My essays throughout this semester have expressed how art is

beneficial in helping people with physical or mental illnesses, along with how it can help in

situations of distress related to unemployment or poverty. That being said, they have all led up to

ideas for how I will go about making my passion project and call-to-action. The first thought that

I had for my passion project that I thought would be interesting was to make a website, but what

would I make it about? There are many ways I could go about making a website about art, such

as fun crafts for kids, or fun facts about art. Although these ideas would be fun, I had to keep in

mind that my passion project had to correspond with my essays I have been writing this entire

semester. My essays had a lot to do with art helping people, so I wanted to show how art makes

up and benefits the world in different ways. I eventually came up with the idea of making it

about the different ways art serves society. This project took a lot of research in how the world

benefits from art and the different types of arts that are out there. Not only was this research

helpful, but it also opened my eyes to the different arts and how many of them go un-noticed.

While I did succeed in making my passion project, I faced many obstacles in getting

there. Not necessarily making the website itself but finding the time to put forth the effort in
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working on it while balancing out my workload with my other assignments and classes. I had

never realized how time consuming the passion project would be and how much thought and

planning would go into it. I had always thought of myself as a pretty good writer and how my

writing was college and job ready, but I never took into consideration how much thought and

technique went into writing essays, such as formatting, structure, and styles of writing. At the

beginning of the semester taking this online class, I did not anticipate the vast amounts of work

that would have to be completed within a few days or a week, and how much writing I would be

doing. Not only that, but I also had to make the adjustment of working together with others by

taking the initiative in helping my group, finishing my assignments, asking questions, and not

procrastinating. Overall, I was satisfied with the finished product of my passion project, but I

must say that I owed a lot of it to my past research for my rhetorical analysis and causal/proposal

essays, along with me putting in time and effort to make it presentable. While working on the

rhetorical analysis and causal proposal essays, it taught me a lot about the importance of sentence

structures and how important it is to do research and citing the works that were used. If it were

not for me doing the research about how art benefits people with mental illnesses and me

suggesting a proposal of how art can help people, my passion project would have probably

turned out a lot different and not as detail as it is now.

If it were not for this class, I would not have gotten a taste of what to expect from college

classes and I would not have had the chance to do this project. Working on the passion project

this entire semester has shown me a great deal of responsibility and that I am capable of so much

more than I thought I was. It opened my eyes to the world I have yet to experience and how

important research and writing are in a job. Honestly, if I were to start over with this project, I

would probably do the same steps as I did before. That being; Realizing my passion, doing
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research, and putting in the time. But maybe next time I will do a little better in managing my

time and being less stressed. Despite that, I would not do anything differently. Although this year

has been a challenge, it has taught me many important lessons that helped me to make my

writing better and presentable, which will be extremely beneficial in my future of writing and my

job.