After six weeks, I feel as though my research skills, citing abilities, and sense of community have advanced.
I have always been somewhat familiar with the art of research since I engaged in debate throughout high school, but over this course i feel as though i learned how to use The Florida State Library tools to locate and use tools to find sources from academic journals or just sources that have been peer reviewed. I also learned how to do an annotated bibliography, which I had never done before. I think being able to use an annotated bibliography is a tool that I can now use to my advantage for future classes… especially since oftentimes i forget what certain sources contain or where specific information originated from, but with an annotated bibliography i can locate this information with ease. I almost wish I could have taken this class my freshman year of high school because it would have made my research for speech and debate so much more simple.
Another component of this course that I found particularly useful was the inquiry project. It is definitely hard to find yourself in a new school, especially one that is 40,000 students large, so having a project that sort of forces you to engage with the campus outside of class was honestly kind of helpful. At first I was annoyed and a little embarrassed to ask people to be in my project and be interviewed but it genuinely ended up benefiting me because i was able to immerse myself in a group that I actually really enjoy and feel respected and appreciated within. It may have taken me longer to join this group if it had not been for this inquiry project. I not only got to meet the two people that I interviewed with but I basically got to meet all of the members within Hillel (or at least the members attending in the summer) and it was really heartwarming and welcoming, especially as a nervous freshman who is STRUGGLING tremendously to make friends.
My personal narrative was really insightful because it assisted me with coming to terms with hand problems and sort of just accepting myself because I am usually too self conscious to tell others when I am struggling to open things or move things, but after sort of just writing it out and talking to someone that is not related to me or really close to me made me feel better about myself, so i think that was the project with the biggest impact for me.
Another thing that I thought was interesting and a tool that I will probably use in the future is to end on an image. Usually I feel as though I have no clue how to end or i end and it sound really boring or generic, but Mat’s idea of “ending on an image” is actually pretty good because it does not make your writing definitive and it allows readers to have some food for thought and something to look back on and reminisce, which is a lot better than me ending it in some boring way that makes my readers confused as to what I am discussing. My personal narrative’s ending was definitely pretty bland prior to mat’s suggestion.
I also thought the campaign project was really fun and interesting because it allowed me to experience english in a modern way. Usually when people, myself included, think of english or writing we think of books or newspapers or old fashioned means of communication, but in my campaign project I ended up making a twitter and posting about my community on there which is really fun and different for me because I had never even had a twitter of any kind before this class, and twitter is basically a new means of english and communication...especially considering the literal president of the united states uses it to make global announcements. So i think the campaign project was really eye-opening to me in the way where I came to the realization that social media platforms like twitter really are the new means of communicating and getting messages across. I also never considered memes or gifs to be a genre and I never even really thought about them in terms of context, but it's true, even memes and gifs are a genre and can have pretty big meanings and are used by people all over the world. The campaign project definitely made me reevaluate myself and what im posting and who it is for and what my context is behind posting it.
Overall, this class was very insightful and a great start to my future english endeavors at Florida State.
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