Summarizing A Summer

1. What skills have you learned in this class and how might you apply them to writing in your career or future college courses?

This course has been extremely influential in helping me grow as a writer. Many of the tutorial videos that had to do with proper citations or punctuations showed me how to fix some of those easy to make as well as fix errors that I myself commit all the time. I was able to get a better idea of when to use commas and when they are really just unnecessary.
2. How have the readings in the class affected you?

The readings in this class were really great choices. I must be biased and say “The Things They Carried” is still my favorite. That entire story is just amazing to me, this man is drafted and manages to come back and not only tell his personal stories but give us stories truer than true in an attempt to bring out the emotions him and his men experienced. I love this book and can definitely see myself reading it for a third time after this class.
3. How have you met the learning outcomes for the class (which can be found on the syllabus)?

I feel like our learning outcomes were met in the first two weeks! Seriously though throughout this summer course we have covered so much material, analysis, summarization, interpretation of information, we’ve done grammar, read literature, critiqued each other, and shared our learning through blogs! That’s not even everything, but the learning outcomes were defiantly a success in my opinion, we did work.
4. How has your writing or your writing process changed?

Honestly my process of writing is still pretty much the same. This does not mean I have not learned anything it’s just simply a process that works best for me. For example I get my topic narrowed down; I make a four square and write a question I want to answer in each of them that can tie back to my thesis. Then I research a ton of sources, take the ones I want to use, highlight the info I want and put that info into the four square, and Boom! Essay.
5. What were your challenges in the class?  How were you able to overcome them?

The challenges I faced in this class honestly had more to do with the fact that it was online and I felt like many times I really needed to double check a requirement or something. I managed the work relatively well, it was just the uncertainty and miscommunications every now and then from the fact that it was online and I had no one to out right ask that I struggled with mostly. Also The interpretation of Tim O’Brien’s story was a challenge as well. His story is such a difficult one to right about or describe I wanted to do it justice in my essay number three, but I think it was that pressure to do it well that pushed me to succeed. I quite enjoyed this class material overall!