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To: Jerome McKeever

From: Tyler Reese
Subject: Reflection of English 1020
Date: August 3, 2014

Dear Professor McKeever,
I am writing to you to provide my reflection on the research analysis process I have
undertaken throughout the past seven weeks in your class. In this reflection I hope to better
explain why I selected my topic, how I approached my three papers, my fulfillment of the course
outcomes and objectives, as well as, my comments on the overall classroom and online
experience.
As you may recall, I began my research project by first searching for a topic that I found
interesting, relevant, fun and would have enough primary source material that I could utilize.
After searching through the 100 possible topics I decided to focus my research on Golden Corn:
Rock in the 1950s. While at first glance this topic may have seemed like an odd choice for a
public health major that never played an instrument or took a music lesson, rock music is a
natural part of my everyday life. I have always enjoyed classic Rock music and recently became
interested in tracing the roots of the rhythms, sounds, lyrical content and cover songs that lead to
the birth of Rock n Roll. Today many people are complaining that todays music is awful
and lacks any beat or creativity. However, I believe that if we peel away the surface of songs
we can actually trace them back to rock subgenres like punk, progressive rock, psychedelic rock,
rockabilly, disco, grunge or even doo-wop. Because of this interest, I decided to dive into the
1950s birth of Rock music and discover how it shaped individuals and society.
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Once I settled on a topic, I searched for a strong source material on my chosen topic and
drafted a literary review of the text. I knew that to be successful I would have to start off very
broad with my literary review and then slowly narrow it as I wrote my historical profile and even
narrower for my narrative. Upon searching the OhioLink Library system for books on Rock n
Roll in the 1950s I stumbled on Glenn C. Altschulers non-fiction book, All Shook Up: How
Rock N Roll Changed America (2003). The book was a fascinating and easy read that
effectively introduced me to the topic by discussing how Rock music influenced societys views
on race, sexuality, pop culture and generational conflicts. In his book, Alschuler mentioned
several years including Rock performers like Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and non-
performers like Alan Freed and Dick Clark. It was through reading All Shook Up that I learned
about Cleveland native, Alan Freed, and his many contributions to the genre.
I found that writing the literary review was by far the easier of the two essays because of
its almost book report-like format and style. The profile was also straight forward, however, it
was very hard to cut down all the information I had read about Freed to reasonable length. My
final paper was a daunting 2,703 words. I was intrigued by Alan Freed because of his Cleveland
and The Ohio State University connections. I was inspired by his fearlessness to take on critics
and defend his fans. Upon reading several biographies that all seemed to gloss over his
involvement in the payola scandal I set out to find a more critical account of this period in
Freeds life. I knew if I could find some accounts of his payola hearing or criminal proceedings I
would have a great starting point for my narrative assignment. Searching the internet was of little
help since no audio or visual records were kept of his hearings, so I turned to several books and
found one that provided a lot of first-hand accounts from Alan Freed, his family and his lawyer,
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Warren Troob. I decided to write my narrative from Troobs perspective because he was able to
provide unique insight and expertise on the payola scandal.
Overall, I thought the narrative was the hardest paper to write because in recent years my
college and high school classes did not focus on creative writing pieces. I struggled with how to
lay the story out, how to hold the audiences attention and how to put filler information in that
was not expressly provided in the research materials I used. As a student who is used to writing
about scientific and historical facts, this freestyle approach to writing caused me great
uncertainty and consternation.
Ultimately though, I think I was very successful at writing three well written papers in
MLA standard English that properly demonstrated my ability to write persuasive, interpretive,
and analytical college essays. I also practiced thinking creatively and critically while conducting
substantive independent research. With each writing assignment, I exceeded the total minimum
word count and utilized the Smarthinking editing process. The positive feedback from my
Smarthinking editor helped me make constructive changes to my essays, as needed.
Overall, I think I improved my writing skills, gained new research skills and learned a lot
about my topic. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process and no longer see research papers or
narratives as an arduous task. I hope I further demonstrated my learning abilities in class by
preparing a detailed annotated bibliography, responding to discussion questions online, making a
nice Weebly website and participating in class as often as I could. I greatly enjoyed taking
English 1020 with you and I hope you enjoyed reading my papers about Rock n Roll in the
1950s. Thanks for a great summer English class!