My Reflections of English

Hello, and welcome to the gallery of my literary work! My name is Amanda Goodrich, but I much prefer to be called Mandy Moody. I prefer this because Mandy is a shortened version of Amanda, and Moody is my dad’s last name. I am a seventeen year old full time college student, and I spend most of my life in a class room. I spend any free time I have reading anything I can get my hands on, and writing whenever a scrap of paper is nearby. I am deeply entrenched in my family and in my faith. Without these two things holding me together, I would be a completely different person that I have turned out to be. Although I have been told I am mature for my age, I have very little life experience. When I started school my hope was to expand my views and meet people who are much different than I. This was definitely something I got to achieve in English 101.

When I first started this class, I had every intention of breezing through it. I figured it would be a very easy class to pass and exceed in. I thought English was always my best subject, and I basked in the attention of past teachers. In the first week of taking this class though, my gloating was abruptly put to an end. Assignment after assignment, and essay after essay I received grades lower than I expected. I will admit, these grades caused a great deal of sweat, anxiety, and tears. I realized very quickly in the game that stylization is not a replacement or as important, as substance. It’s one thing to write a creative opinion piece, it’s another thing entirely to write an objective analysis piece. This class helped me to grow as a writer because it forced me to write something other than skin deep essays. It forced me to write deep, analytical papers that really made me think and examine a subject. This class also didn’t allow me to just rigidly stick to my own opinion without considering those of others. I had to step back, and objectively acknowledge other people’s views on a subject. Sometimes this involved admitting that maybe there are two sides to a scenario. Although it was a great deal of hard work, overall this class has benefited me supremely as a writer.

The first subject that we dove into in this class was identity. Not only have my beliefs regarding the aspects of identity been changed from this class, but the very meaning of the word itself. Before this class unraveled what an identity truly is, I believed it to be a two-dimensional word equivalent to “personality”. Readings from out text as well as fellow students thoughts have shown me that personality traits are but a fraction of what makes up an identity. I now know that identity is a multi-layered and constantly changing summary of what a person was, who they currently are, and who they will be in the future. Since identity is made up of all these things, it’s hard to pick out just one aspect of it to analyze. Picking just one contributor of identity out like we did in our first essays is also very difficult. The reason why this was so hard is because everyone is right. Every text reading, student essay, and opinion were right about identity. It’s impossible to pigeon-hole identity down to one trait or cause, because there are an infinite number of possibilities.

My perceptions towards what a community is and how one works have also been altered because of this class. Before when I thought of community, I thought of a neighborhood, city, town, or any other location. By the end of the community unit I began to realize that community is a chameleon of a word. As brought out by our second blog, community can be a verb. It can also be a lifestyle, a hobby, even an online form of communication as brought out by the essay “MySpace Outage Leaves Millions Friendless” by the publication The Onion. I have also learned that community also doesn’t always produce positive results. This was proven from the reading “The Secret Society of the Starving” written by Mim Udovitch.
From our Tradition unit I have learned that balance is necessary for tradition to survive. You cannot hold on to an old tradition for dear life hoping that everything will stay exactly the same throughout the years. Yet if you willingly let a tradition go, you lose a part of your history. This is where the balance is vital. Since the modern world moves at such a fast pace, tradition has to adapt to the changes to avoid being left behind in the dust. While this is true, this unit helped me develop a greater appreciation for traditions and what they mean to a culture or a family.

There was a common element that I learned from all three of the units for this quarter. Whether we are talking about identity, community, or tradition I learned that there is no right or wrong answer to the meaning or the causes of each. I believe this is what makes this a diversity class. All three of the units were understood to be different based on who was talking about it. Everybody in the class had something new, exciting, and interesting to add to the topic. The culmination of everyone’s opinions allowed my own views and perceptions to expand and take in new knowledge. This enlightening of my perceptions is something that I will be forever grateful for.

For this last assignment we were asked to bring together the pieces that best displayed our skills as a writer. We were told to choose a piece that best demonstrated our critical thinking, how we have improved, our ability to write to an audience, and a piece of our choice. This was actually the hardest part for me out of this whole complex portfolio. After days of changing my mind and analyzing my work I finally figured out what I want to display. Our first timed write based on the movie Bend It like Beckham adequately showcases my critical thinking skills. Any of our papers could have worked as my revision piece, but in the end I chose our second timed write. For our voice and audience piece I chose a discussion forum that generated a great deal of conversation and debate. I chose this piece because it was easily relatable to my audience no matter what age or culture of the person reading it. Last but also my favorite was the tradition blog. I wrote about an old family tradition that has been left in my childhood, but still has plenty of emotion to share with others. I appreciate you taking the time out to read through my journey in English 101D.