Writing Class Journey

            I started the class with no idea what it was about. It was my first year in an American school system, and ENG 11000 was my first class I was starting the semester with. I was anxious and I was expecting it to be something completely different, (a usual English class that will teach us writing in Standard English, with all these grammar rules.) However, I was proved wrong from day one.

            I remember the first day Prof. Katch, asked us to introduce ourselves and I saw that all our classmates were from different background, we had different stories, and that made me a bit more relaxed seeing how diverse we were and how much we were understanding each other.

            My English writing before I started the English Writing Class was just like my mother would call it when I would translate it to Albanian for her “It does not sound poetic,” and I agree it really did not have that much rhythm to it, and it was sounding very plain and so not like me.

            However, going through all the phases of the class helped me develop my writing in English as well, and I started writing in English not as much as I write in Albanian, but it was a great start, since my words would flow more easily and have more meaning to them.

            We started the first phase with the essay “Mother’s Tongue” whom I loved, and I related to it so much, but I also had struggles understanding it on my first time reading it, and I had to read it countless times till I figured the essay flow and it all started to make sense to me.

            But what helped me more were The Rhetorical Situation Worksheets we would do, and doing one particularly for the “Mother Toung” as the first essay we read made me separate the essay in parts, and not only understand what it is talking about, but also:

What the author meant with it?

Why did she choose to write something like that?

How did she connect different parts of the stories together?

Where was the essay published and why was it published in such a place?

There were so many questions coming at me through the Rhetorical Situation Worksheets that really helped me analyze the essays and ask myself:

What is the message the author wanted to share with us?

Or what intrigued me more was analyzing why the author chose this specific way (genre) to share the store with the audience.

            I remember my response to the “Mother Tongue” essay when I did the Rhetorical Situation Worksheet, was:

“There is beauty in everything, in all different cultures we belong to. There is always something special that makes us different in our own way. Amy found her true self after so much time of trying to be someone she was not, and she did not need the public to approve how good her writing was, as long as her mother gave her the verdict: ‘So easy to read.’”

Hulaj, Era. Mother Tongue – The Rhetorical Situation Worksheet

This reminds me of my own first essay I did for the class on Phase one: “How did it all start?” and when I said:

“When my mother noticed I started writing I still remember the joy in her eyes, it was like I gave her all the world, and I felt pride in her eyes for me. That look on her made me the happiest child in the world, I wanted nothing more but to make sure I would placate that smile on her face till eternity.”

Hulaj, Era. “How did it all start?” Phase one, Language and Literacy Narrative

So, there is always something or someone that pushes us to go forward, in my case my mother and that is where I related so much with Amy.

            Moving forward to June Jordan’s Essay a very confusing one I would say, and I even remember emailing Prof. Katch about it and telling him that I was not understanding the essay at all as it jumps from one topic to another one, and Prof. Katch’s respond was:

“Jordan jumps from one topic to another. And if you notice, she also jumps from one style of writing to another (a few times). If you are not sure why she is doing that, that’s okay: write about what confuses you. And in class we will talk about the essay, and I think you’ll get more clarity then.”

An email response from Prof. Katch

“Write about what confuses you?” was stuck to my mind, and I was like “You know what this actually makes sense,” this is part of what analyzing something in a rhetorical way means:

Writing about what questions arise when we read something.

Or what is about it that we like/dislike?

If it confuses us, why so?

And that is where I started to embrace reading in English, and even though there were things I did not understand while reading I would take note of these questions and search about them later till I figured the meaning behind them.

              Phase two came in so fast, and I was sad to be honest, I think I was enjoying phase one way too much.

However, in phase two I was challenged with something new for me, “Creating a Peer Profile” for one of our classmates. I know it may sound easy to others, but to me it was hard to grasp the meaning of what a “Peer Profile” means. I never read magazines, or I was never interested in reading stories about people’s lives. So, I had to do a lot of research, and prepare for the interview with my classmate, which actually ended way easier than I thought it would, and I think I was just stressing too much about it.

I remember Jason answering one of my questions during the interview “What is the difference between Dominican Republic and the US?” and he said:

“Um, in the Dominican Republic, I’ll say that they are really, like, really expressive. There, they will tell you what it is, like, straight up. That’s why it’s a little bit intimidating whenever I go over there because they’re not scared to say anything. They’re, they’re really blunt. And so, that, that, just knowing that puts a little bit, like, of nerves inside of me …. And here I feel like people are more less judgmental and more open to letting you in over there.”

The Peer Interview

I related to it so much, and it made me think this is the reason I was an introvert as well, the constant fear of people judging me, or correcting me instead of accepting me just the way I was. And that gave me more courage to continue testing my limits and, in our case, exploring more in writing and giving myself more space to just be out there and for example when it came to my turn for Mabrouk to interview me I was way more comfortable in sharing my story without worrying of others having judgmental thoughts towards me.

             As for phase three and four I would not say they were challenging, but I was not as concentrated as I was supposed to be on them. And that influenced me not having the best performance I was supposed to and not using my full learning capacity. And as one of my peers from my usual “Group Class” would say: “We are doing Rhetorical Situation Worksheets for our ‘Cubes’ for the Architecture Class” while we were in the Eng 110 class hours and as long as it may sound funny or maybe stupidity it was the truth.

            Phase three was about creating Research Papers, and again it was new to me, even though I was assigned to do one in another class prior to this one, but that did not end well. So, I was grateful that we went through how to properly create one, as I know is something that I must be doing a lot as part of my studies. And I know that my research paper called “Is it acceptable to write the way we speak?” still was different from the other peers, but I was happy with the outcome, and I think I achieved what I wanted to learn from this phase, and that was how to combine my thoughts with somebody else’s opinions from my research materials.

            Phase four went very fast and to me it was like we never went through it, but again it was not like I was that much concentrated to it anyway. However, when I started writing about the “Self-Assessment Essay” I was very emotional, and it made me look back to where we started and how much it helped me grow, and learn about things that were very much needed, but it also helped me gain friends and see the class as something that I did not just have to be part of it because it was required, but I wanted to be part of it because of the joy it would bring me, but also because of the way we all saw each other in class as equals and our opinions were valued by everyone including our Professor himself. But I must agree I was always a few minutes late for class.

            However, these were my biggest achievements from this writing class:

Learning how to value myself and also others around me.

The importance of everyone’s opinions and not to always look at what the professor’s opinion is.

How to properly analyze various sources, and how to thoroughly research and get the best result I wanted to.

But I will admit I still do not know how to professionally write a ‘Cover Letter” or what is the meaning behind it.