My ERH 101 Journey

 

Welcome to my ePortfolio, where you can see my journey as a writer in ERH 101! Over the last four weeks, I have written more than I have ever written before. As a result of my hard work, my writing has dramatically improved. Through reading about writing and participating in exercises assigned by Mr. Hamilton, my writing has been challenged in new ways. As a result, I now have new skill sets that can be utilized to perfect any paper I write in the future.

Entering a community like VMI for the first time can be very unnerving, and cutting my vacation short to do some writing is not a very appealing way to end my summer vacation. However, I quickly found that the people at VMI, especially my brother rats, are actually really nice and happily helped me transition to life at VMI. I never realized what a four-week period could do for me. I often hear the expression, “You can’t do anything in a month”, but I found that this is not necessarily true. In ERH 101, I have been able to refurbish my literary skills, and I am extremely happy with the results of my undertakings.

The first piece of the puzzle that led me to being a better writer was a reflection. Reflecting is an important part of writing that allows the writer to examine his or her works and consider what can be improved upon. For me, I found that most of my writing needed to improve. I remember reflecting on my synesthesia and how it directly affects my writing. Synesthesia is when two senses are stimulated by one action. In my case, speaking and touch share stimuli. This affects my writing because it causes me to write nonsensically. When I write, I write as a demonstration of what I feel. Prompts tend to make me feel a certain way, which then makes me want to write a certain words to relate that feeling. For example, sometimes when I want to describe how my legs feel after a long day of work, I might say that my legs are thaw. This makes no sense, but when I say it, it feels right. Conquering and controlling my synesthesia is one part of my writing I improved on during the last month.

The next element of my writing that I worked to develop was being descriptive. The first big writing assignment we were assigned was the “Portrait of a Writer” narrative. In this essay we had to compose a narrative that shared a memory we had when writing that also had an overall lesson to learn. I chose to write about my time working on my senior project because it was ruined by a car crash. Writing my draft for the first time was easy. We learned about shitty first drafts and how every good writer writes a shitty first draft, so I was not worried about being a terrible writer. Besides first drafts, we also learned a lot about the writing process. One night, we had to read an essay from Tierney and Pearson that talked about alignment, revisions and alignment. This showed us how to think about writing as a collaborative effort between the writer and reader. It told us to think about who the reader might be and how to target your writing at them. At first, I thought my writing was always very descriptive and very insightful, but looking back at my first draft, you can see that was not the case:

The animals were nice and fun to be with; the dogs were friendly, the goats were funny and the cats were playful.

After reading this, it is clear that this in no way descriptive. But, there is nothing here to worry about because I learned about how to revise and think about my audience. After going through peer reviews and some revisions, I was able to come up with a much better result:

The farm I worked on was small. It didn’t have a lot of land, but it did have quite a few animals. There were roosters, dogs, cats, rabbits, goats, and sheep. Each animal had its own enclosure or place to rest or lay eggs. Every morning I would park my car and walk through a herd of noisy roosters to get to the dogs that were happy to greet me everyday. On my way by, a cat usually poked its head outside the shed door to see what was going on. After greeting the dogs, I would walk by the smelly rabbit cage to the back of the property where there was a small pasture for the goats and sheep. The sheep tended to stay with their family, but the goats were more curious and would trot over to say hi.

The difference between these two passages is extensive. I worked on thinking about who the reader was and how much they know about the topic. By thinking of these variables, I came up with a strategy to approach writing this section. I like how much of an improvement there was between the first draft and the final. Now, I feel confident that I can be descriptive when I need to be.

The next assignment we received taught me much more about writing that ultimately contributed to my advancement as a writer. I think the lessons we learned with this assignment are the most important writing lessons I have ever learned. We had to choose a text and write about its genre by identifying its conventions. By identifying conventions, any writer can talk about anything or write in any style. Conventions are the identifying features of a genre. I decided to write about the musical genre of blues-rock. I started by simply naming off my favorite musical artist of the genre. Next, I went through each core instrument and explained how each directly contributes to the sound of blues-rock. I thought this was going to be easy, because I loved the genre, but I quickly found that it was going to be a lot harder than I thought. When I began to try to describe the sounds each instrument made, I couldn’t figure out how to describe what I was hearing. My first attempt was this:

Ginger Baker of Cream made monumental strides in advancing what the drummer can do. His playing was very timely and had an African influence that pushed past simple time keeping and added in more fills. This created a sound that contributed to each song and played an active role in each chorus.

After revising and rewriting and revising and rewriting and doing it several more times, I was able to produce this:

Ginger Baker of Cream had a deep African influence that works to create subtle yet powerful beats that make each song pop out. His playing isn’t about smashing as many drums as he can in a short period of time, but relies on having perfect time and hitting the drums exactly when they need to be hit. Baker accomplishes this with much skill. The perfect example of Bakers playing is in Cream’s “Sunshine of You Love”.

The first draft is not much different than the second, but in the second, I identified and targeted the conventions of blues-rock and explained where they can be found in the song. Conventions don’t only apply to music but also applies to different styles of writing. For example, writing for a research paper is going to have different conventions than a fiction book. By being able to identify conventions, my writing has greatly developed.

Finally, in the last assignment we tied together everything we learned and wrote about discourse communities. To effectively write this essay we needed to learn about what a discourse community was and how to write about one. We looked at prevalent writers and how they explained discourse communities and how they wrote about them to identify what we needed to do. I felt that I had a good understanding about what to write about and how to go about writing the essay. I was also pleased that I could write about something familiar to me. When I began to write the essay I attempted to do too much to little space and it ended up being cluttered and confusing. For example:

Those who are novice to the long car trip will mostly be impatient. The less experience someone has with it, the less comfortable they will be with longer duration rides. We were all novices at one point or another. When I was a kid I was very impatient and not ready for making the long distance trip.

Consequently, I again went back and figured out a better way of communicating what I was trying to say. Eventually, I wrote this:

Being in a car for an extended period of time can be difficult, especially when all you want to do is get out to the sight of your destination. Cars are not large spaces, especially when you have a full family and luggage crammed in. It is not wild to suggest that cars are not the most comfortable form of transportation.

I felt very good that what I wrote was relatable and made sense to the reader. After many hours of work I was happy with what I came up with and again I saw myself as someone new who could write effectively about anything.

My time at VMI has already influenced greatly. During the last month, I got the opportunity to improve my writing in three important ways. Earlier, I struggled with writing in detail. I wasn’t confident that I could write effectively and I didn’t find joy in writing. But now, I find that I am a much more powerful writer and I can write very interestingly and descriptively. The unknown was also revealed a little bit to me. It never occurred to me that text could have a genre or that there could be specific conventions to look for in someone’s writing. ERH 101 showed me that you could break down every piece of writing or any text at all and figure out how to write in that genre by simply identifying its conventions. Lastly, I learned how to write within in a way I am uncomfortable with. Discourse community ethnography’s are not something I look forward to, but by identifying its features and by being descriptive; I was able to be effective. Thanks to ERH 101 and Mr. Hamilton, my writing is much better than it ever has been.