As stated in my About page, this blog was created for my English class at Santa Clara University to be able to type out our research process and thoughts as we moved through the quarter and kept building onto our research project. After looking back at the class, I realized that I have learned so many lessons and methods to improve on my writing and as the title says, think critically about my own writing. Although my title is broad across all CTW classes at Santa Clara, I will only be focusing on the one I took for the past two quarters.
In the beginning of year, I carried a fear of writing and “Englishing” since in high school, I never seemed to produce the work that my English teacher in junior and senior year expected from us. Yes, I ended up with an A-/B in the classes, but I never seemed to fully meet her expectations, not to mention that she would reiterate over and over again how we should be producing college freshman writing, but for some reason, I could not. So going into this class, I was unsure of my abilities as a writer and critical thinker, but it all worked out in the end.
This is honestly due to my professor’s, Amy Lueck’s, excellent methods of teaching. Compared to my high school teacher, Professor Lueck clearly laid out what was expected from us and how we could improve on our writing. With emphasis on metacommentary and quote hamburgers, I was able to expand on my ideas in ways I never thought possible. Also, I’m not sure if it’s because I already learned it once in junior year, but when the class was required to do a rhetorical analysis on an ad, it came to me so much easier to me than it did in my junior year. Whether it was Professor Lueck’s amazing teaching or expansion of my previous knowledge, through this class, my ability to write papers improved exponentially. Through these two quarters, my journey as a writer was a life-changing one (in my ability “to English”).
Writing for the English Class Eyes 