Final Reflection

I never thought I would experience so much in the one simple class I decided to take for fun! English 2035, Writing for Public Forums, has truly been one of the most rewarding courses I have taken. On the first day I was a little terrified with how intense this class would be, but the terror was backed with even more excitement. Although a quick thought to drop the class crossed my mind, I pushed through my fears and continued with the course – and I am so glad that I did.

At the beginning of the semester the class was assigned a blog post narrative and I was mortified with the word count! How would I ever write a narrative in under 300 words?! I just did not think it was possible. But after reading and discussing the reasoning behind keeping it short and sweet, I was able to applying what we learned and complete the blog post. In a way, this assignment paved the way for this course, even though it seemed impertinent to the project.  

After the blog post the class was split into three groups that would meet for the rest of the semester. The idea of only being with one group for a whole semester made me a little nauseous but as far as the team work, I have definitely gained the most out of this experience. It was very tough to get five people together at a time, stay on task while we were together, and then agree on writing methods while we completed our assignments. Luckily, everyone in my group was willing to hear each other out and to compromise. While writing our first email to Rachel Watson – our community partner – we all seemed to care too much about little things that did not matter to the point that it was wasting our time. Afterward we learned to be more cautious of our time and less worried about unnecessary changes.

I had a great time learning how to write a proposal and then writing them with my group. Before this class I did not know much about proposals and had maybe only read one. I was so worried that I was not prepared enough to write one, but after the readings I felt much more confident. Although it was hard to write as a group, I was so glad we were able to write it together. Writing with five people to sound like one is a difficult feat! It was a little rocky, but we scraped our knees enough to push us forward.  

After presenting our proposal and meeting with Rachel to decide what action we would take, the rest of the semester seemed to zoom by. Although we were still working together, delegating became crucial and we worked on separate projects to save on time. As the semester came to an end it felt like crunch time was upon our group. Small things seemed like they would never come together, but everything worked out just great in the end.

Handing our work over to Rachel was so satisfying! To look back and see how far we had come was simply remarkable. I can personally say that I will use this experience to mold future projects. I will be more confident in working with a client, I will know how it feels to provide a service with my writing skills, and I specifically plan on using the writing skills we learned to compose more successful blog posts as well as social media posts.

Although this was a pioneer course, I am confident in saying that I cannot think of anything else that I needed during this class. There were points during the semester that I felt unprepared and uninformed – which cause some minor ‘heart  attacks’ – but in the end, those moments helped shape the work that our group did, so I cannot honestly complain about those times. Overall, I feel like this course was set up very well. There were applicable readings, great discussions, and the perfect amount of direction when needed.  I have learned many valuable skills including how to work with a team, how to write different documents, and how to frontload as I write.

I am sad to see the semester come to an end, but I am so grateful for all that I have learned – for developing great teamwork skills, learning how to shape my writing with frontloading and word usage, and working with a client. All of these tasks will carry me forward into the future and if you get a chance to do something like this, jump on board! The whole experience will be more rewarding than you can ever imagine!