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Ethan Eldred

Kilpatrick/ ENGL-2600

05/03/22

Reflective writing

During this semester I had found myself struggling heavily in this class, I felt

disorganized, displaced and honestly didn’t feel like I could grasp the concept we were learning

in class. Between this and the three other classes I felt like I was overwhelmed and wanted to go

towards a different degree, but this class made me stick it out and I feel so much better about the

coursework I have done. At the start of the first assignment with a explication paper I had found

myself at a loss of words but as each response paper came by I found myself improving in small

and simple ways. As I saw with my papers, I was really my own worst enemy because I

wouldn’t put my all into my essays and I wouldn’t get to the marrow of the topic. I even found

myself struggling with this through out the entirety of the final paper. But through conversations

and getting multiple feedback opportunities from the professor and peers I had a chance to better

understand what I was looking for.

The poetry unit had the biggest impact on me as it was my first real introduction to the

world of literature. I had up to this point not given much thought to literature, what it meant or

any of that, All I wanted to do was write a good story. However, I found that to truly write a

good story I have to understand more than just intuition. During last semester I took the

Imaginative writing and cruised through that course and was able to get fall and spring folio

submissions accepted, and it made me feel incredible but my teacher gave me the same response

of digging deeper. Finding the DNA that makes my stories, my stories. I didn’t take it at face

value though, I just brushed it to the side, and it was during the poetry unit when we studied the
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digger poem and just something about it was a moment of clarity I needed to redefine something

I had not way of really redefining on my own. This idea helped me inside of the humanities by

making me understand that my shoes are not my own but a recreation of past shoes just with a

flair unique to me. Just like how writing across the board is so diverse that we have people like

Mary Shelly to Stephen king.

This class I found connected with a communications class I was taking in how when

looking at a writing the most important piece to it had been understanding other people’s

context. In interpersonal communications it is important to have that as it allows us to take

advantage of the humanities and allows us to connect with one another to a greater extent. It also

connects the two together in being able to further understand who people are, in interpersonal

communications there are so many details and nuances you must understand. And in

understanding those you get a chance to form connections deeper but also how to improve the

communication, in this class writing, and its effectiveness. In also doing this it helped me

challenge multiple of the world views I have held.

In this class it helped change the narrow mindset regarding who I read and what kind of

texts I was bringing into my life. This class broadened my horizons into a better appreciation of

the different authors and texts that we get to study in class but also the way I approach other

content. I still read for entertainment, but this class helped me understand the innerworkings to

see what authors may be telling us about life. I never did much exploration into other genres or

authors until this class, especially with poetry. I sought out and started reading poetry through a

new frame and understanding. This is primarily from the array of assignments and readings we
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had got tasked to do, and it was primarily the analysis paper that helped me understand where my

struggles lied.

The biggest challenge I had faced inside of this class was the amount of time spent on it. I

never spent much time on class work and primarily focused on work life with this as secondary,

but I found that I couldn’t do that this semester. I had to embrace the workflow even when I

doubted what I was doing. This entire semester has been a testament to if this is really what I

want out of life, and the short answer is that this class helped me decide that it was. The entire

class helped me embrace the humanities and understand my own world view but it also has

helped me in my personal and work life by broadening my vision. This is a result of achieving

the course outcome in being more rhetorically aware to the texts I’m reading but also inside of

the conversations I have with others.

In total this class really pushed me to focus on the work in front of me and encouraged

me heavily to rely on my peers for assistance. Lastly, I would encourage all of my peers too take

this class as I have learned so many valuable skills but also disciplines that I wasn’t aware I had.

But on top of all of that this class, as stated many times before, helped me understand my own

shoes better while helping me define where I can learn from those around me.