Southerland 1

Simone Southerland

Professor Jan Rieman

English 1101-022

May 3, 2010

Look At Me Now: A Reflection of the Halfway Mark In English Class

I remember the first time that I attempted to take English 1101. It was the

summer following my high school graduation. I figured that I would take it in the

summer and get it over with. Unfortunately, I allowed other things to interfere with my

education. I attended two classes, wrote one paper, and never went back until ten years

later. Here I am again, back in English 1101 with a new attitude and prospective on

writing. I prayed for the desire to write because it had always been something I dreaded.

Writing was tedious, long, and boring, and I could never seem to write exactly what I

wanted to say. During the short amount of time that has passed so far this semester, I

have began to embrace all of my previous dislikes about writing and turn them into

obstacles that I know I can conquer. This class has done nothing but help.

The first thing that Dr. Rieman, my English professor, did on the first day of class

was hand the class colored index cards. On the cards, we were to write our names along

with our strengths and weaknesses. This exercise was to help us identify what areas we

needed help on and possibly set some personal goals for ourselves as writers.

One of the goals that Dr. Rieman had for my class was to get us comfortable with

one another. To do that, she facilitated two different name games that we played to

become familiar with each other. I think the name games were extremely helpful and

necessary for the atmosphere that the professor wished to create. Those exercises have

made me much more familiar with the students in the classroom. I am even able to
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recognize my classmates outside of the classroom, which does not happen with the

classmates from my other classes.

Now we were acquainted with each other and it was time to share the first

assignment that Dr. Rieman had given us to do. We were to write notes and jot down

things that were in question regarding the syllabus for this class. I remember not having

a clue what Moodle or the Ning site was. When I read that a portfolio was going to be

required of us, I remember feeling intimidated. I had not the first idea on how to create a

portfolio. When I got up and presented my thoughts and concerns to the class, all of my

questions were answered.

The next task that was required of the class was to create a classroom culture that

would allow everyone to feel comfortable with sharing his or her own opinions and ideas.

The classroom culture is working well. Everyone is respectful when we have our

classroom discussions. It is still a challenge to get people to volunteer freely without a

moment of silence after the professor has asked for participants in whatever she would

like demonstrated or shared. That tells me that shyness may not be an issue that can be

solved with a classroom culture.

The professor also requires the class to carry an old-school composition book that

she refers to as our daybook. We are sometimes given writing prompts in the beginning

of class that we write about for three to six minutes. I think this assignment is meant to

help us jot down our thoughts quickly on paper, a way of brainstorming. Writing in a

daybook is different for me. I’ve never been asked or required to write impromptu except

for on a test. The only time I’ve ever seen a class where the teacher encouraged her

students to write in the beginning of class was on a movie. Even if the students felt they

didn’t have anything to write about, the teacher urged them to write something, just like
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my professor. To me, it’s a form of free expression that you don’t have to worry about

being graded on. I can say what I feel without giving strong attention to grammatical or

spelling errors. The hardest thing to fight is going brain dead it the mist of my writing,

but I enjoy the challenge.

In one of our first readings, I learned about underlining. I’ve honestly only done

that on the SAT. Grade school was a long time ago for me, therefore, I don’t quite

remember if I used those skills in my readings back then. The only thing that sticks out

about my English classes in grade school is vocabulary. I loved learning new words and

still do. I feel as though I still have a long way to go with underlining, especially when it

comes to longer readings. On the SAT it worked quite well when it came to getting the

main point of a reading or picking out vocabulary words that the test may ask you to

interpret. On longer readings, it doesn’t work the same. I feel like I underline way too

much. I need to taper down what I underline to what is really important.

There was also attention given to reverse underlining. I haven’t found that to be

resourceful to me at this point. I think it’s because I’m already too analytical. When I

see a word that has an unknown meaning to me either because of the usage or the

newness, I automatically go deeper to understand exactly what it is that the writer is

trying to say. I’ve tried to skim through a reading before but found myself not being able

to retain much of what I read. My retention is much better when I take my time, but it

feels like it takes forever just to read a few pages. I would like to purchase one of those

‘read fast’ programs or instructional books to see if that would help. With all the reading

that is required in college, I need a solution that includes retention and speed.

One of the other required readings was an essay written by Jean Anyon entitled

“Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work.” When I think about my writing
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abilities, I feel like I can relate to Anyon’s article now more than ever. She did a small

study comparing five different elementary schools in four tiers of social classes to see if

there was any difference on the kind of education received. The one thing that stood out

to me in the article was the observation that was made that the use of creative thinking

rose as the social class of the school rose. I don’t remember writing with creativity back

in grade school. I remember summarizing and paraphrasing being the two things that

were taught to me. All my English classes in high school were Honors and still the one

thing that stands out to me is the learning of vocabulary, its meaning, spelling, analogies,

etc. I did book reports, but my teachers didn’t have me dissect how I truly felt about

them and the reason why. In this class, we started with a critical inquiry on this essay

that eventually led up to a critical interpretation. I really liked this assignment. The only

thing that troubled me was what to point of Anyon’s essay to argue. I even did some

extra research on more of Anyon’s work to get a little more background on her to see if

that would help. That actually gave me more avenues in which to direct my paper. I

finally landed on something that I was able to create a somewhat solid argument.

After we read Dr. Anyon’s essay, we wrote a critical interpretation on it. The Dr.

Rieman chose to go step by step with the critical interpretation process because most

people had never written one before. The first step was to read and take notes. Then we

were instructed to read it again and come up with two questions that we had regarding the

essay. With these two questions, we were to form a critical inquiry paper. We all were

to bring out critical inquiry papers to class and work together on them in what Dr.

Rieman organized as peer workshops. Peer workshops were designed to help students

collaborate ideas on whatever assignment was the object of discussion. Dr. Rieman

assigned students to peer workshops in groups of three or four. You usually were not
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placed with the same people every time because one, attendance, and two, the

opportunity to share ideas with different people. I particular didn’t get much out of peer

workshop. When I read my Anyon paper, no one could give me any solid

recommendation on it except for the instructor. My peers all said that it sounded good to

them. They didn’t have any suggestions for me except for maybe some grammatical

errors. I did my best with trying to help people actually understand the assignment rather

than just summing up what they read.

I’m going to go back a bit to before I even registered for English 1101. When I

first spoke to my academic advisor at UNCC, she urged me to make English Composition

one of my first classes. I was against it. I didn’t like writing and wanted to take a

shortened version of the class in the summer. I was somewhat forced to take this course

as a way of filling up my schedule. I am glad now that I’m taking this class. I plan on

using the skills that I am learning in here to help me with all my courses that I am taking

now and the ones that I’ll take in the future. I can’t wait to learn how to perfect some of

my weaknesses, if it is at all possible to perfect them. At the least, I can work on them. I

have so many thoughts in my head when it comes to a subject that I just don’t know

where to direct my focus. That plays a huge part in being able to transition well. Maybe

I need to go back to what I did on the newer SAT, which includes a writing section. I did

very well on the essay portion of the test, which was very surprising to me because I’ve

never felt writing was one of my strong points. I used a SAT prep book to prepare for the

test. It taught me to jot down all the thoughts that came to my head with the topic

sentence that was given and then write my argument. I only had thirty minutes to come

up with something convincing. Maybe I did well because I really liked the subject on

which I was writing.

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Our syllabus for this class had a set of goals listed on the front page. I honestly

never had given my self any goals as writer before I entered this class, as I have already

mentioned before. I know the goals that this course has for me will on help me with my

own personal goals of becoming an instructor. I part of me wishes writing was not a

requirement of becoming a scholar, but that is just one thing I am going to have to

master.

At this point in the semester, I can’t wait until spring break! I have so many

things to work on. I want to have a great portfolio to turn in for this class. The

conference that I had with my professor as well as the feedback she gave me with my

paper will help me do some revisions to my work that will hopefully make what I write

sound like what I would say. I love to talk and make solid arguments. Once I learn to

transform all my thoughts effectively onto paper, I will have reached my goal and feel

like an overall dynamite communicator.