Writing History
After preparing for this assignment, I’ve realized that English 1020 is going to be slightly more difficult that I had originally anticipated. I am excited and apprehensive at the same time. It has been quite sometime since I have been in school and let’s just say that I took English 1010 the last time a Democrat held the Presidential Office. I have never stopped writing. In fact, I write quite often, almost daily in some fashion or another. I rather enjoy writing, but mostly in the form of blogging, internet posting, and poetry. I have no one to grade me or critic these writings but myself and there is no section in the Bedford Handbook that covers how to properly structure internet arguments and song lyrics. Maybe I will write to the publisher and suggest they amend that.
I did well in high school, scoring an A on my senior paper in which I wrote about pirates. This was long before Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom popularized the subject, mind you. As a more creative writer, I despised having to toil over bibliography and citation. I have always written emotionally and imaginatively, so plagiarism or structured writing in general has never been a focus of mine. I do understand the importance of it and look forward to learning more about it and expanding my writing formats. I made an A in Senior English, but a C in English 1010. Of course, I did find my Senior English class a lot more interesting than English 1010 and that weighed heavily on the amount of effort and attention I gave my work in each respective class. From what I know so far about English 1020, I am very interested and hope to do well in this class after I brush up on the proper writing techniques. I have learned there are a great deal more resources for students to excel in school than there were during my last venture into higher learning and I intend to take full advantage of this.
I’d like to give more detail about my English 1010 class, but unfortunately it is a bit of a blur. I know my professor was an extremely nice lady, but I can’t remember the subject matter. I remember reading a few stories about African-American women, but that is all I can recall. In high school we read and wrote about the Greek classics, and a lot of “old world” historical literature. I have no more in common with Oedipus Rex than I do Phillis Wheatley, but for whatever reason I enjoyed and remembered my high school class quite a bit more. Our professor, Dr. Dennis, was very involved in our work and progress. He would remind us almost daily how much we would be writing in college and how important his class was to prepare us for this. While I enjoyed coming up with thoughts and opinions for papers, I did not enjoy having to follow so many guidelines. I was never short on content, but never fully understood the point of outlines and rough drafts. On the creative side, I’m more Shel Silverstein; on the structure side, I’m e.e. cummings. Ironically, I’m a spelling, punctuation and grammar Nazi. I’m not saying I’m the most proficient in those categories as I’m sure I’ve made some mistakes in this paper. I just can’t stand to hear someone end a sentence with a preposition, interchange is and are, or spell the related form of lose “loosing”. I’ve oftentimes gotten in trouble with former bosses for replying to their emails with corrected copies, highlighting all of their mistakes with red letters and punctuation. They especially hate this when you reply to all.
I really hope to learn a lot and excel in this class. I am always open-minded, willing to learn and eager to improve. I have also really enjoyed the topics we have discussed in class. I am very interested in politics and think that such controversial issues will feed some very passionate and informative writings. I have my opinions on such topics, but love hearing others. We seem to have a fairly diverse class with people from all over the country and with different life experiences. Maybe in English 1020 I can learn more than just how to write a good argumentative paper.
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