SELF REFLECTION

Unitil after I took English 1020 class I could not clearly put myself in a specific cathegory of writers. My skill in writing was not necessarily sharp outside of essays for my history major class.
Taking English 1020 gave me the knowledge of the various and different areas of writing which I did not know before. And it also gave me the chance to critically think of issues from different perspectives.

My writing has changed significantly since the first day of class. I started out as a highly conservative person with strong and entrenched views about society, politics and culture. I was more inclined to write about the injustices of society and the resulting difficulties visited upon people. I would most likely write about a serious issue with a conservative view than I would write about a prank, like in my fifteenth post.

One of the challenges I enjoyed in this exercise as a writer was that, the class challlenged me to get outside of my specific shell of writing serious issues and to writing about things that are fun. In doing so, for instance, in some of the free writes, I was able to truly realize that “all play and no work make science a boring subject”. Perhaps the challenge lay in the fact that I still had to be efficient in depicting fun things as I do in serious issues like Darfur.

In spite of the fact that I considered this a challenge, it has opened up an avenue for me to write more by veering off traditional issues like correcting the perception of people about Africa or educating people on unversal solidarity embeded in the tenets Islam. I would like to write more on issues that center around society in a much less serious tone. I am inclined to believe that this would prove how good of a writer I could be. My thought on this is that if I can write about different categories of writing effieciently, then I may have truly mastered the art of writing. This does not imply that I would like to alter my style but it will help spread my horizon in writing.

My experiences with writing in general was enhacnce especially with the development of ideas. Short notebook writing in the class helped me brainstorm ideas I did not know could be developed in few second and actually write or expand on them. I came to the understanding that the central theme in writing rests is being able to develop the ideas you want to write on and deftly deliberate on them. I used this method very easily in my posting about Africa titled “The Other Africa you do not know” which centred on the mainstream media's perception of what Africa looks like. I was able to elucidate the ideas that Africa goes beyond being a huge jungle where children run around in the nude and women bare-chested.

As a writer, I have hardly had the chance for other people to look at my work and critically analyse it(I mean my work) for improvements through suggestions. The peer review method used in English 1020 gave me the first opportunity to look at the work of others and offer meaningful suggestions on how they can improve upon what they write. It provided a contructive platform on which I critically analyse other works which I did not do before.

One of the things I have come to accept as a writer is that, a third eye on your work is always good. It gives you the chance to make corrections and improve the key concepts necessary to make a particular piece of writing good. For example in my reflective essay I wrote on a visit to London in the April of 2007. My description of the airport at first was not very vivid and it took a peer review for me to add a few more points to bring the entire decription of the airport together.

This was in fact a vast improvement on what I had written before in another essay on observation. In my observation essay I interviewed a pyschologist at a shelter in which I enquired on the activities of a shelter for abused women. My desription of the atmosphere and surrounding in which the interview was conducted was clear but I would have added different things to it.

As a writer I began with much less skill and knowledge of the different categories of writing but at the end of this class I have vastly improved both my critical reading and writing skill. A comparison of my first and last blogs attest to this fact.