JD Wiener
When I signed up for ENC 2135, I thought I already had credit for ENC 1101 from my freshman year. I find the first day of the second week, once it is already too late to switch, that I in fact did not have credit for 1101 and it is highly recommended that I drop this course and take it in the spring rather than take them backwards. I had never written a research paper and I thought genres only had to do with what type of music I’m listening to or what type of movie I’m watching. I probably should have dropped the class, it was the safer thing to do but I told myself I should at least try and if it gets too hard I could always drop it later.
The first couple weeks of class, I thought Mat was crazy with blog posts almost every night and essays due multiple times a week (Narrative, personal and community profile, ect.). I thought this would be a class I could breeze through like my high school classes and not have to touch my computer for this class outside of the laundry room. I was wrong, I had to go to 3 conferences at the Sweet Shop, two mandatory, one optional but those were probably the most helpful thing of everything. The one on one time with Mat actually really helped to structure the essay and talk about what I was supposed to be talking about since this was the first time I have written papers like this. In addition to the Sweet Shop, I had to go to the RWC (Reading Writing Center) three times for revisions and drafts. This was not at all the easy A I thought it was going to be.
It came time to write project 1 and I had no idea what to write about. What community was I apart of? Where did I feel safe? I had nothing to write about. But one day, Mat made us do a “free write” exercise, meaning you write for 5 minutes straight about stupid shit that pops into your head, knowing it wouldn’t be read by anyone else. I wrote almost 700 words in 5 minutes, more than anyone else in the class and while they were about the most random things you could think of, the common theme was football. After the free write it became clear to me I would be able to write about High School football for my personal narrative. I quickly through down 1000 words and turned it in without even reading it over. I had always done that in high school and always done fine so I figured it wouldn’t really matter. A few days later when I got my grade back, Mat picked my paper apart for all the grammatical errors and issues with sentence structure. I was unhappy with my grade of a 77 and Mat said the only way I could change that was to make an appointment with the Reading and Writing Center. That’s just what I did, going to the RWC to get my paper revised and fixing other parts of the paper. I brought my grade up to a 82 but Mat informed me there was still work to be done on the conclusion. So once again, I revised it, changing the conclusion this time and brought my grade up to a 87 on project 1, a grade I could live with.
Come time for project 2, I knew a lot about college football but didn’t know if I could write 3000 words on it. We had to use something called a peer reviewed source, something I had never heard of. I was scared I was going to do it completely wrong, but after looking at previous classes papers and talking to Mat, I had an idea of what I was going to do. I was so worried about writing a paper so long, since I had never done it in the past, but it was so much easier being broken up into the many sections, making it seem shorter and making it almost impossible to procrastinate. I ended up going to get it drafted at the RWC, I wasn’t going to end up making the same mistake as the first time. I ended up having one of the better papers Mat has seen on FSU football and I got a 91. I was very happy with project 2.
Then it was time for project 3, I didn’t know how I was going to advertise for a community I wasn’t yet apart of. It actually came pretty easy making a poster, Twitter page and Twitter post. ENC 2135 was a lot of work but wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. I improved a lot as a writer and I plan on using these skills as I go on in college.
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