This course was very beneficial to me, I am glad I took it near the beginning of my college experience since everything learned here can be taken on to all other classes. Overall, this course really helped with analyzing texts which I hadn't expected to do. This was the first class where a text was read and one sentence or portion was taken out and really analyzed as to what was being said by that statement. After having done this process in this course I am surprised that I have not been required done so before. When it came down to the actually writing process I was equally pleased. Prior to the class I felt more like it was just writing a paper to get it done rather than a process to get your ideas across to the reader. Now that I have completed the writing process, for college-level papers, I feel much more confident. I also am very pleased about receiving comments written right into our completed comments rather than just an overall comment. I love being able to go back and correct the papers after having received the comments. I think being allowed to do this really completes the writing process and helps make the students better writers. As far as the thinking in this course, it was more that I expected. Not to mean I wasn't expecting to think for this class. Critical thinking was a pivotal part of the course and the classroom discussions and brainstorming really helped to develop complex ideas on what we wanted to write about for each paper.
I enjoyed the reading assignments and movies that we watched. I never even knew about the Geechee and their struggle until we read God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man. I also enjoyed being able to read other students' examples of papers to see what grade that type of paper would receive. It definitely helped put the grading rubric into perspective. Reading all the different articles allowed us to get different points view from different sources on the same subject. I also enjoyed the concept of watching the movie and writing a paper on just one point of that movie that intrigued us; rather than just writing about the movie as a whole. This allowed us to use our critical thinking skills and apply it to something we were passionate about.
Overall, this was a very enjoyable class and I'm really glad I was a part of it. With the skills we learned, all my future college-level papers will be able to be up to expectations.
