Chapman 1 Chapman Hinnant ENGL 1101-104 October 10, 2013 Mid-Term Reflection Throughout the first six weeks

of English composition class, my mind was truly put on path of exploration of writing and literacy. Prior to starting this semester, I spent six years after high school in the military. During this time I felt like my critical analysis of literature and my overall creativity had plummeted. My number one reason for going back to school was building upon the education that I once excelled upon through high school. For personal reasons, I voluntarily put my formal education on the back-burner once I joined the military. Now that I am at UNCC, I am finally able to get my mind running on all cylinders. The first thing that I encountered through this class was the exposure of Bohannon. It is common for me to absolutely dread the coursework that we would cover prior to ever starting an English class; this is due to the fact that Ive never really enjoyed writing. My outlook and opinions on English have drastically changed and I whole-heartedly contribute it to our classroom discussions, reading Bohannons philosophies, and reading multiple contrasting pieces of literature. I love reading about Bohannons views on how English composition should empower the writer, not hinder them with over formatting and heavy critique of grammar. This simple fact has taught me to let loose and write with my own personal style and voice. Molly Daniels vs. Parish Jenkins and King vs. Lamott made me step back and

Chapman 2 critically think about what I was reading and weigh my personal opinions with opinions of other writers. Honestly, I never thought about how style and voice could affect how a paper feels while reading it, but in the big scheme of things, voice is just as important as content. Another important factor in my critical thinking was analyzing The Lorax with the class. The things that other people think are important to the story and the meaning of fairly obvious yet cryptic themes really intrigued me. It was great having the debate on The Lorax. Although we all knew that the book was both environmental and a childrens book, we were basically forced to argue one way or the other. This was a fantastic way to make me analyze something even deeper in order to counter arguments from the opposing group. At the end, we ended up with a giant list of great arguments and counter-arguments. In my opinion, this is what learning is all about. It is about having a group of different thinking people come together and analytically discuss a specific topic. I really hope more of my future classes follow this model. Through high school I was never really taught how to analyze something. The whole idea of rhetorical analysis is brand new to me, and I must say that I love it! Once I told my wife that we were analyzing simple everyday objects, she said laughingly, Oh God, you analyze everything. That should be something youre good at. I laughed at her and downplayed the fact that I really do analyze everything that I see and do. The difference in my everyday life and the classroom is now I am in the capacity to analyze in a professional environment. I initially had a difficult time figuring out exactly what I wanted to analyze for my paper, so I just randomly chose

Chapman 3 something that my wife had laying around the house: a box of Crayons. At initial glance, it was an everyday item that I wouldnt think twice about, but once I stopped and focused all of my brainpower on analyzing it, I was surprised what I came up with. Ive finally found something that I like to do in an English class. I never thought I would type these words in a paper! The one thing that I have never considered important is the organization of my all of my writing assignments. I knew in high school it was a way for my teacher to have all of my documents in one spot for more efficient grading. With my love for technology and the requirement to have a portfolio, I decided that I would build an online portfolio. At first I thought that a portfolio was just another way to force organization on a student, in reality it is a way to teach students to organize, categorize, and document our collection of ideas. Having the freedom to be creative in how we build our portfolio is just pure awesomeness. By building my portfolio online, I have found that its actually a really fun and easy task to accomplish. Here we go folks, the conclusion! In all seriousness, I feel like I have really learned my own personal process of writing and in my book that is one of the hardest things to learn. In many ways I am similar to King; I like to sit down and tune out everything. Ill open up my laptop, slap on my headphones with a lowvolume country album playing and just write. Its crazy what you can come up with when you block out external stimuli and just focus on the task at hand. Were only six weeks in, but I have grown a very fond liking to writing and analyzing that I never thought existed.