This is it, the final review, and so a sort of microcosm of the Eportfolio project as a whole. This particular essay was supposed to serve as a sort of “home page” for my blog, but as it is, the theme I’ve chosen for my site doesn’t allow a big home page spread, and has a more visual layout, which at once looks more professional, and is (I think) easier to navigate. I’m to tell you folks kind enough (or lost enough) to wander onto my website what exactly I learned this year, and how it’s affected me as a writer and my writing techniques. Well I can honestly tell you that I did in fact learn a lot about writing this year, it’s all about whether that knowledge has sunken in and if I’m smart enough to use it. That’s a bit shakier. This has actually been a problem for a while, and I think a short essay that the class read on the last day of class may offer some clues as to why. The title of the article escapes me, but it was about how kids who were told that their achievements were due to their intelligence versus their hard work learned better and coped better with challenges.  There was alot of ‘You’re so smart” talk when I was a little kid, reading above my grade level stuff, stupid things that elementary schools tell to kids to boost their confidence, gifted programs, etc… I’m not blaming all of my myriad academic failures on being treated like a special snowflake, but it certainly didn’t help. More to the point, while I learned a lot this semester in ERH 101, I don’t believe that I fully utilized that learning, and all the techniques, tips and tricks that went along with it. But lets take a journey through the assignments of the semester anyways, just to fully catoluogue my failures, and to maybe glean some sliver of hope that I absorbed some of the teaching thrown at me.

First up to bat is my Portrait of a Writer paper. The in class preparation for this paper didn’t really add too much to my writer’s toolkit, it was very much a rehash of things we learned in High School, and purposely so I would imagine. Intentionally a confidence booster at the beginning of the year, the take away from this essay process was defintely “your writing isn’t SO terrible,” and the actual mantra repeated over and over by the professor was “Shitty first drafts are ok.” This paper I learned more by doing, which I suppose is how real learning is done now that I think about it. Or at least the kind that should stick with you is. I wrote in the paper about how collaborating with my classmates and with my then professor (it was a paper about a High School writing experience) made writing a better, more manageable, and more satisfying experience, especially on a big assignment like a play or large paper. As I was writing about it, it made me realize that I should probably take my own advice. Luckily enough, that sort of activity, through peer workshops and conferences with my professor, was mandatory, so I actually HAD to apply something I learned, versus letting it fall to the wayside through lack of effort.

Next up, my “Guide to Writing in a Genre.” The learning experience here was supposed to be more closely related to the topic than the last one, but once again I found out more about what works for me writing wise in the actual act of crafting the paper than in the classroom learning and discussion. Hmm perhaps that’s not fair. I guess it would be more accurate to say that it was the application of a technique that I learned in class that helped me learn what worked for me. The technique that I’m talking about is  called “free writing” and it’s exactly what it sounds like. You just sit down and write whatever comes into your head and mildly pertains to the topic at hand. Or even if it doesn’t. That’s what editing is for after all. This is actually the one technique I’ve really taken to heart and used since I learned it in class. So to clarify, I did learn a bit about genres over the course of the paper, but it wasn’t the big take away by any stretch of the imagination.

The final paper was my “Delta Company Ethnography” and boy was this one a doozy. It served mostly to illustrate how little I had learned about writing at a college level, and how much ground I would have to make up to catch my classmates. I did learn a bit about Discourse Communities I suppose, but that knowledge is fairly esoteric, and other than using that knowledge to acertain exactly what a professor wants from a paper, it’s use is pretty much confined to graduate level work about “writing about writing.” That’s in my humble and FAR from professional opinion, so if you think about a discourse community every time you enter a room, then good for you, and I apologize for my disparagement. Mostly my take away from this was that I really should put to use some my own advice that I’d mentioned earlier. Namely reaching out to other students and my professor when I was in trouble, and stuck with the essay.  Free writing unfortunately wasn’t too helpful here, as it was a much more structured affair than the essays that had come before it. 

The essays that came before are examples of what to do, and they really helped me learn. I just need to think of that last one as a learning experience and move on. I know what it is I need to do, and for that I can thank ERH 101, it’s internalizing those lessons and translating them into future writings I have to work on.