When I stepped into the doors of our classroom, I took a big sigh.  I knew that this English class would difficult.  English has never been my favorite subject, and judging on past experiences I assumed what would come.  As a writer, I came into this class not sure of my personal writing style.  I had always written to a topic or by very specific requirements.  My usual goals were to meet the requirements set by the instructor and do the best I could.  I decided that this class was going to be different, and I was going to work on my writing style.  I did make a goal for myself and this was to find my own voice as a writer.  I believe this has been accomplished through the various assignments.  I never knew all that I was capable of until this class.  I could credit this on many things, but if I were to pick out what helped me the most, it was most likely the digital essays.  They were by far the hardest part of this class, but I learned the most from each of them.  Before this class I had never heard of a digital essay, and by looking at the requirements online for the first time I knew there would be challenge.  But, in fact, these helped me find my voice in my writing!  By including digital elements such as videos and images, and formatting the pages, I was able to really allow my point to come across to the audience.  Without these digital components, my paper would have been average just like all of the other papers I have ever written.   The digital elements also helped me to get excited about my writing.  In a lot of the sections, I wanted my page to model my thinking; therefore, I noticed writing came easier.

As I began to write, I was really able to personalize my writing.  I found my voice through the topics.  We were called to write several blogs, a rhetorical analysis, and an inquiry.  Though most of the blogs were prompted, the wild card blogs allowed me a sort of release with my writing.  I did not have to be formal, or write about anything formal.  It was writing for me and this is where I see a lot of my voice coming through.  I also see a reflection of myself in my inquiry page.  At first, I had no idea what an inquiry meant.  I thought “Here we go, another boring research paper”, but I was very wrong.  Inquiry is both fact and opinion based, so it is very rounded in the structure.  I was very relieved that I have the choice to pick my topic, and not just state facts but include myself into this project.  It was by far the easiest because it was directly in relation to my life.  All of the topics I chose to write about are real everyday events that occur around or in my life.  I enjoyed this personable approach to writing.  This is by far the biggest connection that I made in this class.  As students we often have not had this freedom, and I think that is why I had not found my voice yet. 

                Over the weeks in class, we learned about many different skills that would enhance our writing.  Each lesson helped make our writing better and more focused.  We discussed many topics from cultural studies to connecting writing to media.  We also have many standards as students that we must achieve.  We started class talking about good writing.  We made lists of what constitutes a “good writer”.  We found that these standards and expectations of a well-constructed paper were our ideas of a “good” paper.  I definitely can relate to this idea of “how to write a correct paper”.  That is how I had been writing all of my life, and I did not know how to break that mold.  Through the personalization of everything we did in this class, and the loose guidelines, I found that I naturally broke the mold while also keeping the idea of “good writing”.  I never knew that I could write without so many restraints, and it still turned out great!

                I learned a lot about my writing, but it all did not come easy.  I had many challenges to overcome in my class.  The first thing was breaking the ice.  We played a couple introductions games (two truths and a lie.) to really get us acquainted with each other.  If it were not for those games, I most likely would have never talked to half of our small class.  That would have been a challenge for me when it came to peer editing because I would have received the same point of view for revisions on all of my papers.  It also helped when presenting.  I was not nervous at all because these are the same 12 people I had gotten to know for a month.  If I were to become a teacher I would definitely include these games.  Another challenge I had was the digital element.  I had never heard of portfolios online until college.  And even in my last college English course it was every different.  We uploaded all of our documents online, made it look pretty and that was all.  This portfolio caused you to really think.  We had to not only add our writing to the website, but also make the website fit our writing.  I am not much of a creative person, so I had trouble beginning.  I kept at it, and by the end, I loved this new concept.  I wish they could teach this technique in younger grades.  One final challenge that I faced when starting out was the limited restrictions.  As a student you really are not used to someone telling you to write about whatever you want however you want.  We have grown up with these set standards and guidelines, and were taught how to follow them. Being the non-creative person that I am, I found it difficult to pull a random idea from my brain.  I had to think especially hard for my rhetorical analysis.  But after observing my surroundings (and a couple news channels), I realized what I wanted to talk about. After creating my topic for each piece, my writing flowed.  I no longer suffered from the “getting started” disease.  And that is one of my biggest accomplishments of this class.

                This class has truly changed my writing forever.  I am no longer afraid of writing.  It has helped me realize that my writing is not limited.  Also it gave me a new outlook on the process of writing, and how I can present myself and my writing to others.  Thank you so much for all of this wonderful instruction, and for my new outlook on writing.