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Shahana Prakash
Dr. Gary Vaughn
Honors Intermediate Composition
18 April 2014
A Reflection: Growing as a Reader, Writer, Thinker, and Researcher
Ever since the English class I took in my junior year of high school, my teacher igniting a
dormant passion that developed into something real, important, and vital to my life, reading and
writing no longer seemed like a mundane task assigned for the sake of getting a grade. The
lessons I learned through the written page, unlike some math formulas and abstract physical and
biological concepts, felt to me to be a necessary part of daily life. It was not as much academic as
it was reflective, a way to put the constant flurry of thoughts on paper by way of writing. And it
was not so much pedantic as a way to stimulate my thinking by way of reading. During my
freshman year of college, having had a full course of science, I was excited to take part an
English class as a way to renew a somewhat lost interest. I am happy say that Honors
Intermediate Composition rekindled that passion, further developing my ability to read, write,
research, and think.
Ive come to believe that reading is a necessary part of our existence. It is the easiest and
most affordable way to obtain new information, gain new insights, and learn of new
perspectives, other ideas, other opinions. As my pleasure reads are often related to my interests,
namely medicine and historical fiction, it was nice to have to read pieces of Writing about
Writing, the essays of which held a gamut of styles, scope, and topics. An essay I especially
enjoyed was What Writing is by Stephen Hawkings. In this work, he decides that writing is a
way in which information can be transferred without direct communication (our mouths do not
move, he comments). It was a smoothly written essay that was easy to read, having a
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conversational tone, and this essay along with other essays by Malxolm X exposed me to various
formats of writing and the changes that occur in writing style as time progresses (Malcolm Xs
writing, for example, was clearly characteristic of the mid 1900s). Other writings we were
assigned to read, however, were not so easy to read. By the time we were discussing discourse
communities, for instance, the essays by John Swales were more structured that works I was
used to reading, the language not so colloquial, the lexis more formal, the vocabulary well
developed. Sentences in these works were often long and intricate, but the more often I read
these research style writings, the more comfortable I became with the style and the more readily
I could comprehend the authors flow of thoughts and ideas.
In reading, we developed our writing, and so did my ability to write progress through the
course. Im fond of reflective and journal writing, have come to see it as a necessary component
of personal growth, yet writing formal papers (even if narratives) is a harder task. It requires
brainstorming and then the careful combination of sentences to communicate what it is we want
to say. Theres a quotation Ive held to heart that says that anyone can write, but a writer can
write what she means. This quotation is very much applicable to my first essay, a narrative in
which I recall my life as it was shaped both by gymnastics and by reading, each one a language I
had to learn. As I sat down to describe a gymnastics event to start my essay, I initially struggled
to summon the words and adjectives and figurative language to recount the event. Then, when I
closed my eyes and saw the event as it happened, the details became clear, and my vision
focused. It was with this mindset that I finally wrote:
After stretching and practicing easier tricks beforehand, I stood at the corner of
the floor, looking fixedly at the opposite side. My teammates were calling my name
from behind, yelling encouragingly that I got this, that I can do this. My hair was pulled
back tight and my legs and hands were at my sides, covered in white splotches of chalk.
Finally, I focused, and everything went quiet and I saw my movements slowly, my
peripheral vision goneall I saw was the floor and the ending mat. Letting my heart and
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intuition guide me, I ran hard against the floor, felt every nimble footstep rise and
descend, reached desperately and hungrily for the floor, rebounded, and lifted high off the
ground, entering the world for which I lived. I saw blurred images of the gym and my
teammates, took in everything from my surroundings, gauging my position while
enjoying this magical altitude of bliss, and then flipped and twisted, fully and completely,
and landed (Prakash 2)

Likewise, I had to relearn what I had learned in high school to write the literary analysis and
discourse community papers, which called for more formal, succinct, and clear writing, free from
ambiguity, fluff, and description. I learned to be economical with my words, to not spend them
lavishly. A paper, Ive come to realize, may have all the information there, but if written the
wrong way, confused and looped and redundant, the audience is lost, and your message along
with it.
My research skills developed most prominently when I wrote the third essay about
discourse communities. I had researched in high school; however this research was limited to an
in-depth internet search, trying to find sources that would validate my position. In this class,
however, I was given the opportunity to conduct primary research, to interview professionals
with specialized knowledge that could aid me more than any textbook or internet source could. I
learned to be direct and straightforward with my inquiries during interviews and clear in my
surveys. Then, when later writing, I learned to smoothly integrate what research Id conducted
into the fabric of my paper.
Last, the English course helped be become a better critical thinker. Ive always believed
that being a good writer is about being a good thinker. And being a good thinker, someone who
is evaluating her environment, her actions, and those around her, observing in life what seem like
minor details, and considering the world from different lenses, comes largely from one source:
reading and writing. As Ive read in this English class, reading about what writing means, about
what constitutes as literary analysis, and about discourse communities, Ive come across a
plethora of various viewpoints, each one showing me a different way to think about something or
a different way to approach a topic.
I feel fortunate to be able to go to school, to be able to learn and study English writing,
and to be able to read. I find these things necessary for growth, and without them, I know I
would be loose in this world, tethered to no support. Books and writing have been an important,
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vital part of my lifestyle. I am glad that the English class I took this semester could remind me of
this.