As the semester comes to a close, it's time that I reflect on this class and how it's treated me these past few months.
I've had a lot of eye opening experiences- whether they were long talks about political conspiracies (I learned some pretty crazy stuff about how corrupt America is from those) in ALP or Professor Mangini ranting about how we didn't learn a single useful thing about attention grabbing, personal writing in high school, all were overall helpful for me and progressing myself as a student and writer. Even though I still struggled to get out of the manipulative hold of procrastination down to even my last post on this blog, what I liked most about this class is that that never stopped me from receiving honest, most of the time positive, feedback regardless. I knew that if I was facing personal issues, was working so much I couldn't even THINK about school work, or was just down right lazy- if I tried hard enough and put the time in when that creative spark WAS there, my efforts would pay off and it wouldn't effect my overall progress in the class. I think to a lot of college students, we feel it's important that our effort and creativity should be acknowledged (as well as acknowledge when the effort isn't there) or else we feel a sense of hopelessness or constantly questioning if what we're doing is enough. In this class, our professor never failed to do so. As well as teaching us and using our assignments on a new form of media for us to delve into, such as this website portfolio, to expand our knowledge and techniques preparing us steadily for what's ahead of us in the rest of our college careers. I admired this class and enjoyed having it to remember as my first experience at Delaware County Community College.
1 Comment
During our ALP session, an individualized practice class intended to give extra help to English 100 students, with our professor, we explored different ways to potentially start the introduction of our research project. One of the alternative ways to start it was to open with a scene! We took one moment from our week of three good things and focused on how can we relate it to positive psychology and how we can develop a descriptive scene from it to use as a real example for our research like we had done before. I do think this is a really creative approach and a great attention grabber for the project, but I personally chose another approach, so instead I'll be posting my alternate scene introduction here on my blog. Enjoy my negatively positive scene from the October 31st entry of my three good things post.
As you may already know from my previous post, positive psychology is the theme my professor chose for our class for our research project. The concept of positive psychology as well as the "Three Good Things" project was founded by Dr. Martin Seligman, a University of Pennsylvania alumni. In this post, I'll be writing a metaphorical letter to Dr. Seligman telling him how the project effected me the week I took part in it and some things I discovered while doing so.
This might be my favorite post so far! For this week's blog assignment, my class was asked to write down three good things that we did or had happened to us at the end of that day, everyday for a week. The Three Good Things project was conducted for positive psychology research, positive psychology being founded by Martin Seligman. It's purpose was to improve the quality of life of those who did the experiment and help them acknowledge the good things in life no matter how big or small. Another great resource to use for adding some positivity in life is the Greater Good in Action website, if you want to check that out. My own personal experience and findings while trying Three Good Things will be used in my own research project about positive psychology.
Better late than never right... heh 😅. Excuse my late post, I've had a lot on my plate recently, you can get a little taste of that in my "Three Good Things" blog post. As of this post, I'll be answering questions in an another reflection video blog, but this time, I'll be talking about counterfactuals and how they have impacted the writing in my narrative project and even my outlook on the real life experience I tell you about. You can learn more about counterfactuals and how they give modern authors more room to explore different outcomes in the article, "What is Fan Fiction- and why is it making people nervous?" by Stephen Downes. Another great resource to read (or listen) an actual example of a story and how counterfactuals come into play is, "Rewinding and Rewriting: The Alternate Universes in Our Head" by the Hidden Brain Podcast. In the mean time, enjoy a now, slightly less awkward and better prepared vlog by yours truly! Side note: the thumbnail is very amusing to me and I promise I'm not crazy and going off on someone in the video like how that picture depicts lmao. I look like I'm making a very strong point. ANYWAYS, I wish I knew how to change it... This is probably the most exciting yet equally dreadful post yet. Yes, I filmed a video blog or "vlog" as some might say for this week's assignment. In this (I'm sorry in advance) 11 minute long video, I'll just be talking about how this class helped me break from my tense relationship with writing assignments I've had in high school, how it grew to become what it is now and discovering my writerly identity. I also go on to say some habits I need to work on going forward and also what class sessions and readings have helped me improve my own writing. I also want to add that when reflecting on my goals towards the very end of the video, I didn't think beforehand what exactly my goals were... you can see me internally panic and end the video before I could say the last goal because I didn't want to sit there in silence trying to muster something up on the spot, LOL. So, I'll say here that my final goal for the rest of the semester is to not be afraid to ask more questions that can help me improve my work EVEN MORE on top of what I'm already doing for revision. I tend to hold back from asking certain questions in fear of sounding ridiculous, but going forward I also won't censor myself in that aspect as well! Thanks for reading as always now enjoy the painfully awkward video! During week seven, I will be creating a found poem using words and/or excerpts from the 1st draft of my narrative project. The poem creates a creative summary of the topic of my narrative. It tells the story but through phases rather than full sentences. This post will be broken up into two sections, the poem itself and a reflection. I admire this assignment because it’s helped me pick possible themes for my story in the process of finding the phrases. Still not quite sure what a found poem is? Read a sample. The genre of my poem will be freeform excerpting and remixing.
For week six, I'll be revising my post from week five, "Composing a Past Scene." Week five's post is unedited with few revisions and changes, whereas this post I asked myself some questions and changed some things based off our class reading session where we read our work to our peers and received feedback and suggestions on how to make it stronger. Here some of those suggestions come into play.
In this week’s blog post, I’ll be presenting to the reader a scene once again also taken from my life. What’s different about this post is that it takes place in the past and it displays a time where a situation and or my decisions have negatively impacted my life. An interesting read or listen (if you enjoy podcasts) that tells a story of a scene and accurately represents making choices that impact your life while using creative nonfiction can be found here for the audio podcast or here for the text transcript. It is told by famous writer, Lulu Wang.
Much like last week’s blog post, I’ll be creating a scene depicted from my life but this time with added dialogue and symbolism. The use of dialogue and symbolism is important in creative nonfiction writing because it helps develop context and underlying subtext to make a piece of writing with just simple action and description blossom into a full blown story. An example of a scene that strongly represents those two elements is called, Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway.
|
AuthorHi! I'm Taylor Kriebel, a current student at Delaware County Community College. You're currently reading my blog assignments from my English Composition I class. Enjoy! Archives
November 2018
Categories
All
|