Taishaun Thomas Mr.

Neuburger ENG-102-101 14 May 2012 Final Essay A Journey with Writing When I first began English-102 I had no idea how much it would change and improve me as a writer and a thinker. Through this class I have become more confident as a writer and I am much more proficient at clearly expressing my ideas through written communication. This class offered both creativity and structure. I formed my own opinions and learned how to clearly represent them in an academic fashion. The first assignments that we began with were essays out of our English book. We read each essay and wrote essay responses. This was a lot of fun to me, I love reading and trying to find different perspectives and meanings that the author has hidden amongst the words. The writings that we were assigned I found very interesting and thought provoking. I particularly liked Lars Eighner and the Dumpster Diving essay. The writing had several different meanings and it was so interesting to learn about a man that had lived the life of a vagabond. Some assignments also touched on some important current events such as Jack Kevorkian and the controversial subject of assisted suicide. During these assignments we used twitter to engage in debate over the writings, I felt that the use of twitter was a very good idea as it allowed everyone to be involved and express their own opinions. These first assignments really helped me to be more concise when expressing my opinion, as there was a very strict word count limitation, and also helped me

become a better writer by learning how to support my opinion only with information taken from the actual writing. Another one of the earlier assignments that we performed was free writing. This was something that I had never tried before. I wish that we had more opportunities to free write in class, but with many of the time constraints I understand why we couldnt. I have been free writing at home and I think that it is a very useful tool in opening up my creativity and expressing my ideas more clearly. I was quite pleased that we were doing research papers on the Holocaust. During English-101, I did not fully apply myself, and I felt that there was a lot that I missed out on because of this. We started out watching the movie A Film Unfinished, and over spring break we watched survivor testimonies. I enjoyed that learning about the Holocaust was spread out over several weeks; it really gave me a chance to absorb as much information as I could. I found myself thinking about it quite frequently and dwelling on the importance of our generation today having a clear knowledge of what took place so many years ago. The research paper wasnt as daunting to me, as I felt I had a clearer understanding of MLA format and documentation. At first the MLA documentation was kind of confusing, but the way that it was integrated into the class made it more manageable. I felt that the guidance and visual reinforcements were very conducive to learning MLA documentation, without causing me to feel overwhelmed. The first assignments had minimal MLA documentation and progressed throughout the class to be more complex, culminating in the research paper. I still have work to do as far as punctuation and grammatical errors in my writings, but I feel I have improved drastically.

Our final assignment was the video essay, which was about our sense of place. At first I was dreading this assignment, wondering how I could possibly convey my sense of place through a video assignment. I wasnt even sure what my sense of place was. If I had been home in Washington I surely would have done it on my family, yet in Missouri I found myself at an impasse. The end result was satisfying, and as usual, Mr. Neuburger was right when he stated that most of his students found the video assignments as one of the most rewarding and fun projects assigned during the year. I think that there are several aspects of our lives that give us our sense of place, and I thought that my digital story conveyed a very important aspect of my own life. I know that this is a video that I will treasure in the coming years, despite my slight embarrassment over my own imperfections. I thought that using technology in the classroom was a very good idea. Many of the things that we learned helped to make the class more interesting and it was a very good learning tool, especially for visual learners such as me. I also thought that technology in the classroom was a very good idea, because these are tools that we are going to need later on in our lives and especially our college careers. The digital age is only growing, and its important to stay up to date with technology. I am so happy that I chose to come back to Mr. Neubergers class this semester. The way that he teaches and integrates technology into the class makes it both informative and interesting. The subjects that we covered this year really helped me to evolve as a writer. Although I still have work to do improving my writing, the difference between the student beginning the class and ending it are two vastly different writers.