Reflective Letter

Entering into what would have been considered my Sophomore year at Boise State I had very clear expectations of what this English 102 class was going to be like. My initial impression of an English class still stemmed from what I remembered in high school, mostly high level research, drafts of ambiguous papers, bibliographies, busy work, readings, encompassed with pointless and boring lectures that were ultimately unrelated to my life. This is exactly what I remember from working on my senior project in high school. I enjoyed given the freedom to choose a topic I was actually intrigued in, however a general lack of motivation and effort translated into a ten page research paper that regurgitated facts and opinions of a handful of random sources that I agreed with. Up to taking English 102 this was my opinion of all English classes. I had always been frustrated in English classes mostly because I felt Teachers were unjustified to grade my writing based on my ideas or what I had to say. I do understand being graded on the mechanics of a paper and the technical aspects of writing, however I had the opinion that I needed to write my papers to appease the audience of my Teacher or Professor who was handing out the grade. English 102 and Jeremy Branstad presented me with an entirely new angle of writing.

Writing to an audience which was not the teacher of the class, but a defined audience that I was trying to reach, as well as communicating with my sources in a conversation was a very enlightening concept. Never before had I been presented with the idea or opportunity to embrace a voice that I wanted, let alone speak towards an audience that I choose. This helped me to stop focusing on the grade at the end of the class and to start addressing my writing, voice, and research. At the beginning of this course I was at best an amateur writer in the context of this course level. I was able to get my main point across effectively, yet many times ran into road blocks of language as I tried to lengthen my paper and impress my teachers. This was a struggle to over come. I had to worry less about the length of my papers and focus more on concisely delivering my message in a effective manner. Delivering my message effectively to my chosen audience was struggle all itself. While working on my website I lost my audience more than once and complicated my writing with bulky sentences and structure. The habits that I had adopted as a young writer proved to be the hardest part of this class. I am constantly revising and re-revising my sentences to be direct and to the point. Unfortunately this does cut down on the length of my papers substantially. Again I was reminded to not focus on length and simply turning in an assignment. This idea helped me to focus down to what I was trying to present to my audience and redirect my efforts to prepare a stronger argument and stronger paper.

The use of digital rhetoric in this class was an entirely new concept to me. Especially the use of media such as Blogger. Before this course I view blogs simply as another social networking outlet. I had not followed blogs or blogged myself, so I was very naïve to how powerful blogs can be. Once I started using blogger to post my assignments I decided to look at other blogs online and see how people are using them to communicate to their audience. I started out by looking at websites that I frequently visited, most of these sites all used some type of blog to speak to their audience. The majority of the websites I visited were related to bicycling, a major hobby of mine, I instantly noticed that these site were not formal, impersonal pages. The blogs spoke, almost in a conversation, directly to the readers. While reading the blog posts I felt like I was having a one to one talk with the blogger. This concept of a conversation helped me to focus in on writing to an audience. I struggled at first to throw out my old habit of writing to a teacher. I tried to think of my audience as though they were sitting on the other end of my blog reading as I typed, and were actively participating in the conversation. I started to have a more natural flow to my papers as I would have in an almost e-mail like correspondence. I believe this aspect of the writing in a digital rhetoric more than anything helped me find my voice.

As the second unit of the course progressed I was starting to feel comfortable in my writing to my audience, however still struggling. Many of the assigned readings throughout the semester seemed very heavy and abstract to me. I remember reading the first section of Writing Analytically wondering “what the heck does this mean and how will I ever use this in my writing?” however one I started creating my website and directly writing to my audience I realized where everything fell in place. Some of the more helpful readings in the course were those in regards to my research process. Not using a base level approach to finding sources and research really opened up my thought process and complicated my thinking. I used the method of lateral research quit extensively in my research. I relied 90% of my sources from digital media. Again learning how to analyze these sources to determine their reliability was another skill honed this semester. I started by only using sources that appeared from academic, government and educational material. This approach I found to limit my research to exclusively one opinion. Most of these sources shared the same view point, which is fitting as they all related to one another. I then approach other avenues that seems less reputable or traditional, however when I spent my time with each source looking at their intended audience, their sources and their backgrounds, I was able to develop many very powerful sources that were not from the same view point of my other sources.

I spent much time working on the look and feel of my website and became very consumed in making my pages look “pretty” and again lost sight of communicating with my audience. Once I actually started writing the text of my website I had focused so much on the look and feel, I began speaking away from audience, parents, and more towards my sources which were heavily in the academical and professional sector of special education. During the revision process of my website I started out by simply addressing mechanical and technical aspects of my writing. Check first if I had a consistent flow to may work, did my site make the read want to continue to the next section or page. Then I focused closer on how I was delivering my writing to my audience. I had to go back through each section and redraft my ideas and fine tune them to be more concise and straight forward, after all my intention with the site is to inform parents on aspect of minority special education. I found many times I would start my page out simple and straight to the point, but wonder off half way through into a deep and complex issue unrelated to the topic at hand.

Throughout this course the one thing that stands out to me the most of what I learned is consistency. I have made what I believe to be great improvements in my writing and deliverance of my writing to a predetermined audience. Constantly working on addressing the same areas to improve and hone has helped my immensely in my writing. Through the course readings, reflective blogs and in class workshops, peer responses included, has given me insight on where my writing is and where is still needs to go. I am very happy with the outcome of my writing this semester and pleasantly surprised as well. I never expected to make as many changes to my writing as I have during this course, and would like to invite you all to visit my website Challenges in Minority Special Education at http://disproportionaleducation.weebly.com