Course Reflection

Looking back over my progress throughout this course, I feel like I have definitely grown as an analytical thinker. Exposition and Argument really developed my argumental skills, while also improving the sophistication of my writing overall. In high school, the papers I wrote were mostly interpretations of literature text rather than scholarly essays, and as such I was always pushed more to find the underlying meaning beneath the writer’s words. Much of my essays were written more on whims that I’d had about the interpretational meaning of the text, and my essays were not as well thought out. Upon taking this class, the shift in focus for the essays on creating original arguments and making connections across texts was very jarring for me and it was very hard for me to write in the style of the essay that was expected. Creating original arguments has never been very easy for me, but I have grown more used to doing it after writing for this class. I feel that this class also teaches the importance of making connections across many subjects, even when they seem to be unrelated, because there are always connections to be made and being able to make those connections is important no matter what you do in life. Overall, I feel that this class challenged me but drove me to become a better writer and thinker. I hope I will be able to continue to use these skills in the future.