For a long time, writing has been a chore to me. Write this essay for this class, write that for this class; it was never anything about something that I enjoyed. This past year in my English 101 class, writing became something different. Yes, it was still assignments for the class, but it didn’t come off as a chore. We were pretty much given the option to write about whatever we wanted, so long as we could tie it to the prompt somehow. The prompts we were given were very open to interpretation. For instance, the literary narrative could have been about anything, so long as it pertained to reading or writing in some sense. This allowed me to branch out and use my creativity and put some passion into the piece I was creating.
Rhetorical analysis, before this class, was always of some really old (like from the 1700s), really hard to understand, and really annoying essay or quote. It was difficult to formulate thoughts on, and even harder to get words down on the page. For this class, rhetorical analysis was introduced as an analysis of anything we wanted, whether it be a music video, a commercial, or even cover art for an album. We were introduced to rhetorically analyzing colors and shapes, the distance from the screen, and even what the contrast of the picture symbolized, and how to interpret it. The hardest part about that was just deciding what I wanted to write about!
The ethnography was honestly a fun paper to write. I got to write about a community I was involved in (my place of employment) and even interview my co-workers. The paper was broken down into parts, so it was easier to structure it. The specific prompt helped as well, giving me an exact idea of what was needed for the essay. Answering open ended questions is fun in the sense where I get to decide what I want to write about, but specific prompts make it easy to know what I need to add. Overall, after entering college, my thoughts on writing have changed from despising writing, to enjoying certain aspects of it.
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