Caitlin Owen

Reflection A Humanizing Experience

R. Andrew Brown
UWRT 1103
May 1, 2015
This semester has been one of great change for me. My first semester of college was
somewhat difficult; I did well in all of my classes, but had trouble adjusting to being away from
home and from my family, with whom I am extremely close. As a very introverted person,
making friends is not something that comes naturally to me. I spent a great deal of time on the
phone with my mother, sister, and boyfriend in order to feel a little less alone. Over the course of
my spring semester, however, I learned to keep myself company with books and films, and to
dedicate all of my attention possible to my studies.
English has always been a favorite subject of mine, and writing a favorite hobby, so I
was, needless to say, excited to begin the UWRT 1103 course. I was not sure what exactly to
expect from a college English course; my most recent experience in the subject was my AP
senior English class, which was somewhat of a nightmare for me. In this class, we read roughly
five or six full-length classic British novels and just as many, if not more, short stories. When I
received the surprisingly short reading list for this course, I was in shock. What could we
possibly doing in writing course besides constantly reading assigned works and composing
endless essays on them?
Not long after beginning the class, I found that I would be completing a project in which I
would shadow a subject, then write a composition and create a piece of work in relation to it.
This too gave me a sense of dj vu; hadnt I just completed this same project a year earlier in
order to graduate? My senior project had been my greatest source of stress in the past year of my
life, and I wasnt looking forward to a repeat of this. But, I was flooded with relief when I
learned that I would not have to write a research paper. While writing is one of my favorite
things to do, writing research papers is not.
Through my Contemporary Literacy project, I learned more about the work that my sister
does and gained a new appreciation for the profession of counseling. I had never realized the
ways in which counselors are overworked and overwhelmed; the suggested student-to-counselor
ratio is 250 students for every counselor, but less than five states in the country actually meet this
ratio. I also feel that I greatly benefited from getting further practice in writing formal project
proposals.
Although I started the semester as a Pre-Communications major, Im ending it as an
English major with a concentration in Literature and Culture, with the encouragement of my film
professor. I am not sure where my English education will take me, but I am grateful that this
course was a stepping stone along the way.