Month: November 2016

Strength in the Struggle

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Through this writing 101 I’ve learned to appreciate the struggle- that scary, stressful point in a student’s life where you have absolutely no idea how to start an assignment, or get past a block or get an idea out of your head and onto a paper. In high school, the struggle stopped me but through this course I’ve learned to use that struggle to my advantage.

The struggle isn’t a bad thing even if it seems like it is. It’s a motivator of sorts that pushes me to do my best work possible. Having so many ideas about where to go with a paper or stressing about how to make the flow of paper better aren’t bad traits, they’re traits I have because I care about my work.

In my blog posts, I often wrote about not being able to get my ideas out of my head and onto the paper or being at a loss for which direction I should go in. In high school I never asked for help if I was stuck or didn’t know what to do with an assignment out of fear of asking for help. I’m extremely independent and that’ll never change but through this course I’ve learned that there’s nothing wrong with asking for help when I need it. 

Mrs. B from the beginning said she would be there every step of the way to help us whenever we needed it but also we could go to the writing center. Having her there to conference with was something that helped me in the beginning stages but I get very shy when I have people I know read my work so the place that was most helpful was the writing center. I conferenced with the writing center for my papers and each time they showed me that there was no stigma in getting help.

Each time I went I felt even stronger about how much of a positive addition the writing center was to my university experience. I struggled so much with getting ideas out of my head and onto the paper for units 1 and 3 and when I met with the writing center they helped me gather my thoughts and make them actual paragraphs on paper. Getting out of my head is one of my biggest struggles as an academic and reaching out and asking for help is one of the best ways to figure out how to fix it.

This semester has shown me that it is okay to have too many ideas for how to take a paper because that shows I’m invested in my work but I can’t let having all those ideas stop me from putting out the best work I can put out. I have to ask for help when I need it and time after time, that help is the best thing for me.

The fact that I went, got help with my work and even admitted it in my blog shows me that I’ve grown as a student since the beginning of this class. I shook that fear that I might look like I don’t have everything figured out and put myself out there and that shows me that Writing 101 has benefitted me in ways four years of prep school never could.

Tags: Growth, Identity, Journey, Process

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Unit 4 Reflection

crfranco

I really had a hard time with this assignment because I couldn’t get it short and I couldn’t make it informal in the beginning. My argumentative essay was a struggle to not go over word count so shrinking it down to only 500 words was even harder. I have so much that I’d love to say about street art and Banksy himself so only writing a little bit about them both was so hard. I had to choose the information that to me was the most likely to draw a reader in and make them read the whole article and to me everything about this topic is important so it was a struggle. I’ve gotten so used to writing in formal settings only so I kept putting in the big words and long sentences that work really well for formal papers but not so much for an Op-Ed. I had to make it easy to read and easy to bring the reader in and that was hard because I’ve only written research papers and argumentative essays on this topic so making it informal for an Op-Ed was hard.

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Daily Write 11/14

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Today was helpful because I didn’t know to convert my paper from argumentative and in a formal setting to an Op-Ed and not very formal. I needed to make tweaks in some sentences and make it easier to read. I just needed other people to read it so that I could get out of my head and out onto the paper without it sounding so awkward.

Art History

Banksy

Politics

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Brainstorming Op-Ed Topics

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Unit 1:

  • identity
  • college: whether or not out of state tuition is a legal practice
  • family
  • race/profling: Hopewell Baptist
  • social issues
  • native americans: Dakota pipeline

Unit 2:

  • Donald Trump
  • Hillary Clinton
  • election
  • sexism
  • today’s political climate

Unit 3:

  • Street art
  • Banksy’s pop up art shows
  • anonymity
  • what is considered art and what’s not
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Unit Reflection 11/4

crfranco # # #

Writing this paper showed me that I could overcome extreme writers block. I struggled so hard with making my writing into an argumentative piece in the beginning so I just to keep reworking it until it worked out the way it needed to. I didn’t conference with Mrs. B but I conferenced with the writing center and that was the most helpful thing I did when writing this paper. I was so stuck and couldn’t figure out what was wrong and what was right in my writing and I really couldn’t get out of my head and onto the page but the person I met with at the writing center helped the most because she got me to go from the big picture into the details that I needed to focus on so that was so much help. This paper was extremely hard for me just because I couldn’t really get what I wanted out of my head and onto the page so I really struggled with where I wanted the paper to go and how I wanted to say what I needed to say.

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