Reflective Letter

Throughout this quarter, each paper I’ve written has had the specific requirement of not using first person words like I, my, or mine, but now I get to talk about me. I came into this class after being away from school for five years. During those five years, I had a few thoughts on what I wanted to do with my life. My first path led me to culinary school, which was what I had been planning for years. I had enrolled at Western Culinary Institute in Portland, OR. It took my only three weeks to realize that I didn’t want to spend my life in a kitchen. As much as I loved cooking, I knew I would grow to hate it if I had to do it ten hours a day, six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year.  My next path was to become a pastor. After getting accepted to Northwest University in Kirkland, WA , that thought came to a very abrupt halt when I was unable to muster the tuition money. The next, and current, goal became attending school to earn a degree in secondary education with an endorsement in English.

As I mentioned, this was my first quarter back at school after nearly five years, and I’ve decided that school was much easier back in high school, when I was still living with my parents and I didn’t have to think about how tired I’d be after work, which is when I have to do my homework now. The experience of an online classroom also differs quite a bit from the brick and mortar classroom. When having discussions about the readings with other classmates, it is typically easier for me to actually hear tone and inflection in voice, and to be able to ask questions immediately in order to clarify thoughts. The discussion boards made that task slightly difficult, especially when people have the option to simply not respond to a post.

One of the biggest influences on my choice to take this class was the added element of if being a diversity class. I’ve read my fair share of literature by “dead white guys” and thought it would be interesting to do a class that taught the elements of English 101 with selections that showed other views. I would say that I’m a pretty open person as far as not being closed off to people or practices of other cultures, and I have no prejudices against people of other backgrounds. This being said, some of the things I read this quarter really made me see things that I had never thought about before. For instance, the closed-mindedness that is shown in “Dude Looks Like a Lady” really got me thinking about how I view people that dress or look in a way that I’m not accustomed    to; whether I say something out loud or not. This class also made me rework my idea of what a community is. I had always considered it as a very close knit group of people, but it doesn’t have to be. Even in “How To Tame a Wild Tongue,” it talks about the hispanic people in America, which I would consider a community, but they are spread out all over the nation.

I was able to write many different pieces throughout the class in many forms; blogs, discussion board posts, timed writes, and essays. For my portfolio, I chose two blogs, a discussion board thread, and an essay. The first piece I chose was the first blog post I did, which was for the identity unit. I felt that this was one of the best examples of me putting my own voice into my writing. Anybody that has talked to me in person would be able to recognize it as something that I wrote. The second piece I chose was my essay on the comics community that I did for the Community unit. This was my rewrite/revision piece. I chose this because I felt it was a good essay, except for my misunderstanding of the directions in regards to the interview portion of the assignment. So I revised it to include elements from my interview. Next, I inserted a discussion that I had on the forum regarding some of the readings in the Tradition section. This is included because it shows my ability to take a reading and analyze beyond the text in the book into the way the subject matter affects society. For my final element of my e-portfolio, I decided to add the blog post I did in the community unit. I added this in because I was able to use the assignment to talk about something that I really enjoy, and I feel that it’s a solid piece of writing.

I’ve had the chance to read a variety of selections in this class that I normally wouldn’t and I’ve been challenged to think and write about things that I’ve never had to in my school career. Each of my writings displays a different function of my thinking. The thing that I take away most from this class is that my writing is far from where I thought it was, and from where it will need to be if I want to become and English teacher, but with some direction and practice, it will get better.