An Ode to Writing

Final Assessment of Semester

  My name is Chance Marie Sessions, and I am a college student at TAMUCC; I was born in California but live in Rockport, Texas. When hurricane Harvey hit my home went down with it, but we are rebuilding and getting stronger in that matter. College, rebuilding, and having a full time job is a big adjustment to just working full time. My family is slowly starting to rebuild and the house is coming back together in this life changing experience

Why am I working a full time job and going to school full time as well? I live on my own now and have to pay bills including: car, rent, groceries, and various school supplies. With me having to take TSI classes I also have my 18 hours of school weighing on me. Being able to do all these challenging tasks and their demands has not sunk in yet for me to completely process what has happened. The new techniques I have learned are how to elaborate more with my writing, as well as that working with groups is a great tool for feedback. Having met these challenges, I have learned that I have lots of determination when it comes to school. This quality will not only benefit me during my college years but also for my career.

Having made a number of academic changes for my writing, I am getting to better understand the concept of how to make my writing more fluent. When I first walked into my classes I was intimidated by the large class size and all the people that sat before me. In high school, I didn't quite understand how important collaboration is but I learned that in college. For example, when somebody asks “How do you use MLA in your essay?”, I benefit from the explanation because I did not quite understand that concept in high school. I have also gained the ability to learn new things I find interesting, such as when we discuss our writing process. For example, when we come into class everyday and start to write our "writing into the day", in the beginning that helps me get my mind moving in the right direction for the rest of the class. Though writing is a big part of our world, it’s a weird topic because it is not natural; it is learned. I learned this idea in the book “Naming What We Know”. This passage is the one that really stood out for me because I never looked at writing in that way. When I began the process of writing my first essay, I learned how much I needed to learn when it came to this discipline. There are so many different ways people explained to me that I had never thought of how helpful collaboration could be. By using techniques like working as a group, I believe everyone can benefit from feedback such as my talking to the professor to completely understand the instructions for the assignment. These strategies are so fundamental that I can use them throughout college to further my education.

As I am writer transitioning to a new academic standard, having dyslexia proves another challenge for me as a freshmen in college. This is one reason why I have problems with my choppy sentences and sometimes my wording does not make sense. Still, I discovered that by having a peer read my writing and give me notes I can see different points about my work that I first missed. Dealing with dyslexia was only a mild setback because I already have strategies such as reading out loud (a tool I use quite often) and which plays a big role in my writing. I realize I have been coping with these challenges but in college I cannot just cope. I have to think with persistence and use my brain to the best of my ability to get through the semester.

It is a basic common fact that I, the writer, am trying to communicate something to someone else to create the picture in the reader's mind which causes curiosity. The audience is a big reason why I become successful by connecting with the readers. All of these things play a role in my writing; having the techniques to make complete sense and enable the main factors to shine through is a basic goal I always try to achieve. Therefore, having the exigency makes me believe I produce my best work when I write during a short time span. The social element comes in when I try to make the connections with the audience. One way I do this is by expressing how I feel about situations. Rather than just stating, I elaborate on how I may feel about a certain topic by showing the reader with sensory descriptions. Thus, this process leads to the point that my writing is also a rhetorical analysis by finding new ways to manipulate my expressions. For example, by using “elaborate” instead of writing “to go into detail”, I am using stronger words to make my point clearer. Having to make my point clear is my main focus in the first step of the writing process. Then, I focus on details and how I can make my words work for me.

Mr. Benjamin is my seminar teacher that I find to be the most helpful when it comes to explaining things I may not understand. Showing up at 8 in the morning is hard enough for me [YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONE], but sitting around talking about what we had discussed in Wooster lecture two days earlier really helped me understand the lectures. With the ‘crazy man’ hair he has and his weird jokes, he kept me on my toes the entire class and, surprisingly, keeps me awake. He is a very large help when it came to our exam preparations, especially with the chronological order of the exam. We would spend all class doing the topics that we thought were important and even make a game out of it, with people getting into groups and figuring out when the topics actually happened and bringing that into the exam essay. The experience has really opened my eyes to what I need to really hone in on with the lectures the Wooster provides. I believe it is a good thing that every freshman has to take a seminar class because it really made me aware of what I needed to understand and what I need to take away from lectures.

The pop quizzes are the most difficult thing for me in this class. They are always on the days I stayed up writing a paper or just cannot sleep the night before [GOOD LUCK WITH THIS IN THE FUTURE], but I know that is no excuse. In signing up for this class, I thought it would be a waste of time but it turned out to be one of my favorite classes by the end of the semester. Waking up at 6:50 a.m. to make sure I get to class on time before 8 a.m. was definitely worth it.

As far as Mr. Wooster’s lectures they were a large portion of the learning community E. I started to panic; being in a large lecture classroom with so many people is a big change from my high school classroom sizes. I really had to start making a planner of what I need to read everyday and what essays I need to work on throughout the month. Doing so brought me assurance. This process really helped me with the lecture class because of how the readings correlate with the lectures. But, with the lectures, the one that really stood out to me was “The sides of the slaves and the owners’ side”. The reason this lecture was so memorable was the passion he had for his explanation of this topic. The following statement was from Wooster’s lecture, “The slave owners did not think the slaves were being treated wrong due to the fact slaves never ran away. The real reason was because they did not want to get beat to death.” Using this idea in this context made sense to me at this time. But, this truth was another trigger for non-slave states to not dislike the idea of slavery.

The exams were something I struggled with as well. Getting a high B on the first exam and then getting a failing grade on my next one really threw me for a loop. Looking back at the first exam I noticed I studied harder for the first one because I did not know what it would consist of. But, when the second one came around I did not put as much effort into it as I should have. In the future, I will dedicate more time to the way I studied before.