Category: McCoy Fall 2018

Throughout the duration of this course, I have learned many things. Most importantly, I have learned that writing is a process, drafting is a process and the rewriting a piece of writing does not mean you failed. Beginning the course and especially throughout high school, I had on a very straight forwardmindset about writing. Sure, I had taken Foundations of Creative Writing last semester but when it came to academic writing, it had been something I had always dreaded doing. When turning in a rough draft and immediately didn’t receive the best feedback or having the professor say, “this needs to be improved”, shutting down and giving up was my go-to coping mechanism. Throughout this semester, even though it has been my third semester in college, I learned how important it is to not look at writing as needing to be immediate perfection, but more so as what it really is, a process.

When reflecting on high school, most teachers taught using the same concepts: learning, teaching and writing, for the grade, and not to learn. I did have some really amazing teachers that truly did care about if I was learning and how I was learning, but a lot of my teachers did not. In most cases, while writing papers in high school, most teachers did not only teach for the prompt but also graded you on your ability to write to the prompt. Because of this mindset being taken on by most of my teachers, the writing process became something very generic and students were writing to get a good grade and not to learn or understand the material on a deeper level, we were simply writing for an A. This led to students getting in a bad habit of waiting to the last minute to do something and still getting an A on it. Especially within students who were in advanced and honors classes. These habits formed because the writing assignments given to students could be done quickly without engaging into the assignments on a deeper level and thinking about what was to be written. Because of these habits, I didn’t practice writing to learn and grown, instead, practiced learning how to write to get an A on the assignment rather than engaging and interacting with my writing.

Continue reading “Revision is Not Failure”

Personal growth can take several different forms in both different people and different situations. This semester, I was forced to make several changes in both my attitude, as well as my habits in order to be successful. I will admit however, that my changes were a bit late, and therefore did not take full effect until well, now.

Prior to coming to Geneseo, I’d been told by teachers and students alike that I should take AP and Honors courses to prepare for college classes; and so, like all of my friends, I did. I whizzed through the monthly papers in my classes and skated past any sort of real growth, tossing papers aside when I received my 90, even after I’d written it the night before. It was easy. It weakened my work ethic because, I knew that even with minimal effort I would still get better results than a lot of my peers. We were a relatively talented class, our class average upon graduation was an 89.9%, and a lot of us were able to skate by on pure skill. Not a single person ever told me in high school that this would not fly in college. But honestly, even if they had, it takes a long time to break a habit like that. Even in elementary school teachers would use words like, “gifted” or “talented” and so I just thought I was smarter than everyone. Then as we got older, they still kept us “gifted” kids separated from the others, which only led to strengthening our sense of superiority. Now, I’m beginning to realize just how stupid that really is, we were never any better than those kids that didn’t take our fancy classes, most of us just had parents that worked in the school, or in my case, an overbearing mother with a poli-sci degree that she never did anything with and she’d be damned if her child didn’t rise up. Prior to this course, I’d been conditioned to follow specific outlines and think that all that mattered was my grade. However, even early on in the semester, it was clear that the most important thing about this class was not the grade, but the process of thinkING and the way in which we were able to open mindedly and respectfully converse with one another and translate that into our own writing. Continue reading “Adapting (English 203 Final Assessment)”

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Continue reading “A Reflection on Challenge”

Self-improvement, at least for me, is something that seems very difficult to achieve. To better one’s self and to grow as an individual is something people always strive to achieve. However, this process of growth is more difficult to achieve than people give it credit for. This is because it requires the participant to reflect upon their past mistakes and to create a foundation of wisdom based upon the lessons those experiences taught them. It is only human to conduct an action that was wrong or misguided, yet I always wondered why it is so difficult for me to confront these errors of judgment. I had yet to learn the reason until I had entered college and indulged in a variety of courses that would alter my perception of how I lived my life.

Continue reading “The Importance of Self-Reflection”

Group work can sometimes come across as frustrating and unfair due to the fact that people tend to take advantage of this opportunity and not do work. This then creates a opportunity for people to slack off or not contribute to the assignments. As I read through the syllabus at the beginning of the semester, these were my exact thoughts. I was not looking forward to all the group work that was being assigned. Usually, when I would get group assignments, I would tend to push most of the weight with maybe another person. This was very frustrating at the time. Even when told that the other people in the group did not contribute, the professors usually did not care enough to do anything. In some incidents the professor would do something but it would just be a slap on the wrist. This caused me a lot of stress and anxiety when it came to group work.

Continue reading “A Final Wrap (English 203 Final Essay)”

Writing, like any other creative process, is something that requires structure, order, and practice. While some might argue that writing is merely a matter of talent or innate ability, my experiences in this class have taught me that this is far from the case. Over the years, I have dabbled in writing but found myself held back by bad habits. I used to suffer from periods of supposed “writer’s block” and if I did not have a deadline for a piece, it would never get done. The blogging assignment, however, has completely changed my perspective. This assignment forced me to develop a more efficient creative process in order to complete this assignment and develop my skills as a writer. I believe that the structural framework that I developed benefited me by forcing myself to break bad habits and find healthier ways around my problems. I found that as I overcame these problems, both my writing and my engagement improved significantly. Continue reading “Joy from Order (English 203 Final Paper)”

In college, many people have different point of views of what college is to them. They have their own ideas of the college experience and they expect different things for what college does to them.  College is like a labyrinth, it will confuse you and make you struggle, but when you overcome the maze, you will find your own treasure. Continue reading “The labyrinth of life”

In English 203, we read through one of Percival Everett’s poem called, “Zulus.” He utilized alphabetical order as the basis of the poem’s structure providing a sense of organization. Each page contained a single different letter to which he would assemble the poem around. In class, each student was instructed to construct his or her own poems (only A-D) using the alphabetical structure used by Everett. I loved this assignment because in high school I used adore writing poems in my spare time. This activity always relaxed me, especially when I was stressed with school or with family. When everyone finished writing their small poems and read them out loud, I realized something. Everyone had interpreted the prompt in a different way and wrote according to what they believed what needed to be done. For example, one of my groupmates wrote their poem in autumn, while another based it on the literary work, Hamlet. For my poem, I based it around my grandmother.

Continue reading “My Grandmother in Zulus”