Throughout my life in school, I have always been an exceptional writer. I never had to deal with significant errors, however regardless of my writing skill there was always space to improve and new things to learn in the writing field. I learned a multitude of genres in my Writing for the Humanities class and acquired a new set of writing skills as well. At the start of the class I chose a topic of gun regulation from a pro gun perspective and stuck with it throughout the entirety of the class.
This is an example of not only one of the first papers I wrote in my humanities class, but also the first Op Ed I wrote. An Opinion Editorial is one of the many new genres I learned to write taking this class. I feel as though writing this improved my writing skills drastically as I am not only writing but I am learning a completely new way to write that I have not done before. I definitely could use a lot of improvement as it was my first time writing one. I was able to read a couple of Op Eds in class and so I know the basics and will be able to write Op Eds if I need to in the future which will really help with future English classes.
Before my Humanities class I had not actually written a critical analysis before, but I had read examples of critical analysis papers. As a result this was one of the easier papers to write in this class. The familiarity of this kind of paper really helped me because I had a basic template to think about while writing. It was really interesting writing a critical analysis because although I was familiar with the concept I had not actually attempted to write one myself. This writing along with the Op Ed sharply increased my ability to incorporate my opinion into my writing as most of the papers I have written in my life were factual papers where you do not really include your opinion. I feel like throughout the process of writing this paper I mostly increase my analysis skills. This can help with my writing skills as I will be able to better understand whatever topic I have to write about and will be able to get needed information possible.
One of the most valuable skills I acquired from my Humanities class came from writing an annotated bibliography. I wrote my first annotated bibliography in this class and it thought me an entirely new type of organization for my sources. This aids me because it allows me to think more about my sources that I am choosing and I get to see if any sources are actually weak so that I may find a different one. An annotated bibliography allows me to see my sources with more depth than I ever observed them with. This can really help strengthen my evidence for my future papers by exposing my weak sources.
The first I ever heard of a visual essay was in this class, this by far the most interesting to me as it thought me the value of images in an essay. Even though I had never heard of a visual essay before, this was still one of the easiest essays i had in this class. I feel that although it did not prove difficult it still taught me a lot. I learned how to better interpret the meaning of images and political cartoons. This essay also taught me how to relate different images to one topic.
Overall Take
Taking the class Writing for the Humanities I have strengthened my skills as a writer in many ways. This was one of my most informative writing classes. I was exposed to many new things that i had not encountered before anywhere else. I learned how to use rhetorical strategies in my writing. The rhetorical strategies are ethos, pathos, and logos. Logos is the use of logic and reasoning to persuade the target, pathos is using an event to stir up feelings to persuade the audience, and ethos is convincing the audience of your credibility. I learned to better incorporate all three into my writing. Throughout the course many essays were assigned to be completed, many of which I was unsure of where to begin. I was able to overcome this by learning to better create an outline and learn to be able to write out of order and still be able to organize my paper. One of the most helpful features of this class was the peer review. This helps a lot more than some might think because it shows me how readers are actually viewing my work and how it will be interpreted and understood by your audience. This class opened up my mind to new ideas and situations I never thought about. One such example was that the movie Black Panther could possibly be racist. There were many social issues that this class opened my eyes to that I had not given thought to like, cultural appropriation and police brutality. A big part of this class were the discussion posts, everyone in the class would post their interpretation and opinion on whatever article or video we had to watch for class. This taught me to better respect the opinion of those who do not agree with me, and be more open minded to other peoples’ perspectives and ideas. I personally liked this class. I was able to learn a lot and I enjoyed it for the most part. I learned a multitude of valuable skills for future writing and even for discussions. This class was the perfect balance Informative and Intriguing.
