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Jack Davis

Professor Robertson

ENC 1101

6 December 2019

Final Reflection

Overall I learned a lot about the different types of writing in this class. As a freshman in

college I have obviously just come from high school. In high school we only ever wrote MLA

style essays, research papers, and we occasionally had a poetry unit if we were lucky. I never

really enjoyed composition in high school. But when I got to college and took this class I

actually had a good time composing the different projects we did as well as the journals. It was

refreshing to be able to write in different formats for different reasons and purposes. I composed

a literacy narrative that was not in MLA format, I conducted a professional interview and then

wrote a mock magazine piece on it, and I completed my first ever podcast. These are things that

I never thought I would do, especially in a freshman English class at a college. I think the most

valuable thing that I have learned in the class is that life isn’t in MLA format. To expand on

that: being a good composer means being able to effectively transfer your message to your

listeners, readers, students, peers, watchers, or anyone else. In this class and especially for

Project Three it was left to us to pick a genre that best fit our purpose. If you can get people to

understand you then you’ve succeeded in composition. It does not matter how you got it done.

This will definitely be helpful in my future military career where I’ll be tasked with briefings,

debates, and complex issues to solve.

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My ideas about writing have definitely changed since the beginning of the semester.

When I first walked into this class I was prepared for just another semester of English. I thought

this would include some writing, reading, poetry, analysis, and the dreaded research paper.

However, I was pleasantly surprised by what actually happened. I found out that I really enjoy

composing when it isn’t so restrictive and bland. The biggest thing that has changed in my

thinking about composition is why you do it. In this class we talked a lot about audience,

rhetorical situations, genres, purposes, and other aspects of composition. Up until this point I

have just written things because I was required to. I never kept a journal or a diary or wrote on

my own time. It was always for school and because I had to. But now I realize that it is

unrealistic to only write because you are required to. What if I have an opinion on an issue and I

want to broadcast this opinion to other people? I should be able to do that! Even if I made really

good chili and wanted to publish the recipe, that is a form of composition and I should be able to

do it. And second of all, it is not actually that torturous so there’s really no need to avoid it. In

this class we spent a lot of time thinking about our futures and how composition will be present

in them. This was especially obvious in Project Two. One of my other ideas about writing is

that I would pretty much be done with it after college. Now a part of me knew that this was not

at all true, but it was still comforting to think. Interviewing someone who has the job I want to

do in the future was very eye opening. We discussed writing and other forms of composition

that will be asked of me all the time. Through this class I saw that I am in fact not going to get

out of composing things anytime soon and my ideas about that have since changed.

My strongest project is probably my second one. I think it is my best work and it nailed

the goal of actually doing the project. Out of all of the projects I think I put the most effort into
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it simply because it was the project that required the most work. I wrote questions, got an idea of

how I wanted the interview to go, setup, and executed the interview. Then I wrote up a transcript

and a few drafts of the interview commentary. Throughout all of these steps I revised and

refined my project which helped it become my best work. Also, the end result of my project was

exactly what the assignment was trying to achieve. I learned a ton about what my future was

going to look like and the composition I will be doing. This will help me in the long run because

even in my current situation I can prepare myself for what will be asked of me. My weakest

project is my third one. Now my third project isn’t bad, it’s just that I could not put it through

the revision process like I could with the others. The reason for this being that it was a one-take

podcast and I am unable to go back and tweak the podcast without completing re-recording it.

Time was also a factor as this was our last project. I would have liked to make some changes to

it like asking more questions, using a different recording device, and maybe adding some art to

be the cover for the podcast. One reason that may be worth completely recording it again is that

it isn’t exactly what I wanted. I set out to make it a conversational/interview style podcast and I

was not the best at doing so. I asked questions and let my interviewee answer them. I then tried

to comment on her response and then transition to a new topic but I was not the smoothest.

Overall the podcast did not sound as organic as I wanted it to. I was able to revise my podcast

plan and questions and that did help direct it and make it seem more polished. Along with the

podcast I wrote a composer’s statement. The composer’s statement could use more polishing as

well but I have run into the same time issue as mentioned previously.