Course Reflection

Project One

I found this personal narratives cathartic to write. This is a topic I've thought a lot about since leaving Greek life. Forcing myself to make connections between how I am/have been personally affected by social media and my role in the Panhellenic community resulted, I believe in an interesting and informative paper. Viewing Facebook as a text allowed me to categorized online interactions like information from a textbook and analyze their effects on me. Moreover, I've never realized how hard it is to write about yourself; especially considering the facts that my topic was unpleasant and my opinion unpopular. The only critique I was given during my conference was that I was deflecting my analysis. Even though the paper was about me, I was trying to avoid using personal pronouns like "I" or "me." I knew the prompt and the intention of the assignment, and I still subconsciously tried to make my paper as impersonal as possible. In the end, I'm happy with the content I've published and pleased at the personal progress my hours working on it has facilitated.

Project Two

Writing a research paper has proven to be much more effort than writing a personal narrative. Project two involved so much scouring through online and other textual sources. I believe the interview with a professional involved in the community I was focusing on while writing was helpful in inspiring me to write. It was difficult to keep my paper centered around the prompt and the texts I was talking about. I appreciated learning more about feminist activism on social media and domestic violence advocacy as a whole.

Moreover

ENC 2135 (141) has been the most ‘self-centered’ class I’ve taken in my academic career thus far. All of our projects and presentations have either focused on personal experience like project one, or involve exploring topics that we personally had interest in like projects two and three or our mini genre presentations. I think it made doing very involved assignments significantly easier. Another result of this diversification in course material is that I learned so much about so many different topics. I saw presentations in class on politics, veganism, conspiracy theories, military/army branches, etc. We dove into genre analysis and comprehension from the very beginning. I definitely view genres and the categorization of media in a new way. Genre study and development is a subject containing much more variety and scrutiny than I had previously realized. My conclusion from the course is that genre research is an effective tool for analyzing media and can be utilized to effectively communicate ideas and information. The inclusion of many genres increases the likelihood that your desired message will be perceived and understood in the manner you intend.