Coming to an End

I can’t express how glad I am that I signed up for this UWP 101 class rather than the 2:00pm one that I considered taking. I still remember the vivid details from the first day of class. I walked in a few minutes later than everyone and it was already super crowded and claustrophobic. The only seats that were vacant were the ones against the wall under the window. The desks were arranged like a traditional classroom with rows of desks instead of our usual circle. When we were told that the class was going to be revolved around blogging instead of writing papers that’s all I could focus on for the rest of the class period. I was so overwhelmed with all the information that I was receiving that I only remembered the first three names of the people that presented during introductions. In my mind I kept on thinking I can’t do this, it’s too different.

Surprisingly, I adjusted pretty quickly after the first three, four posts. The more I posted the more I started to like the format of this class and blogging because it allowed flexibility. I liked how we had a whole week to generate three posts because I could finish a blog when I was in the mood to write. If it was a paper I know that no matter what, I would always wait till the last minute to finish it. My excuse would be that I work better under pressure. The posts really allowed me to put a good amount of thought into them because I didn’t have to accomplish a large word count in a short amount of time. I also liked how the book, New Keywords was incorporated into this course. It was a good way to start our conversations and we constantly referred back to it during our discussions. In my opinion, this is more effective than analyzing every single word and detail that was used in the text and butchering it to the point where we are sick of the text. New Keywords gave us the opportunity to touch on a number of topics anywhere from biology to deconstruction. It also allowed us to branch out and generate sensitive and insightful conversations. Somehow we always refer back to the word and connect them through our discussions and blogs.

Recently, I went back and reviewed all my posts and even though it has only been a span of six weeks my writing has improved greatly. The different comments that I received from my classmates were extremely beneficial because in a writing workshop only two or three other students examine your essay. In return, it was also interesting to look at my classmates’ work and their writing techniques. In the upcoming quarter I’m going to be taking UWP 104F and I’m not exactly excited that we’re going to be writing essays. Now it’s going to be hard going back to formal papers.