Reflection

First off, I like this class because I do not need to go buy a new ink cartridge for my printer.

Analyzing the above statement gives the following:

1) I like this class.
2a) I do not need to buy a new ink cartridge.
2b) I save money; ink cartridges are expensive.
3a) I do not need to explain as much in words to show you the cost of the ink.
3b) I do not need to explain what kind of printer I have and you still have an image of it.
4) I do not need to be very formal.
5) We save paper!

I enrolled into UWP101 just because it was a required course to graduate. I was prepared to pull all-nighters to finish the writing assignments. On the day before the first day of lecture, I was surprised to find out that we will have a “Paperless Writing” experiment, where the original plan was to have four posts a week about our class discussions. My first thought was that this will be fun. But then on second thought, since it is an upper division writing course, the class discussions will probably revolve around some boring topics and the blogs will probably end up being very formal.

On the first week, like most of my classmates (I think), I was a bit nervous on what to write about and how should I write it. I did not know what the teacher expects from us; I wanted to start off with Truman’s idea of 51% seriousness because these are blogs and not formal papers, but I did not have enough faith in my writing skills to risk it. My first few posts, I tried to stay within the required word count since the teacher said he did not want us to write long essays. I ended up with a below-average grade that week.

Luckily, everyone’s posts are open to the public; as I read other people’s blogs, I see more and more people’s style (and how some are drifting from formal writing). I started to pick up on other people’s writing style and applied it to my own posts. Furthermore, the discussions we have in class contribute to a lot of the random ideas (i.e. this) that comes into my mind when I typed my posts. If we were only turning in 3 or 4 paper assignments over the summer session, I think my writing style would not have improved (if any) as much since I would not have been exposed to so many different style of college-level writing; I would probably only read the impossible-to-read comments that the teacher would leave on my paper.

I think the most beneficial part of this course was at the last 2 weeks when we started to focus on critiquing other people’s post. This, unlike a regular writing assignment, allow us to choose a topic that actually interested us rather than one that we think the teacher would want to read about or one that has the most examples to support a thesis. On my first formal critique, it was hard to formulate a response other than it was a good post. So then I waited a bit until people started posting their critiques; after reading a few, I was able to write my own entry and post it shortly after. On my second formal critique, I was able to give a response on a classmate’s post as well as relating it to another topic that can be open for discussion by other people.

There’s nothing I think should be removed that has not already been removed (small groups working independently from the rest of the class). I think that if there are future classes that use this teaching method, then they should link to “Paperless Writing” so then they can link to the posts of past students (who did not delete their blogs). This will help them gain an insight on what the class will be like, which can help eliminate the first week’s nervousness.