This week – well, this week and a half – was hectic, to say the least.
In the last two classes, we were involved in workshopping the rough draft we submitted, evaluating thesis statements and condensing text. We also discussed a good deal about research and sources.
I’ve started to really look forward to the class workshops. Not only am I helping my partner by giving them feedback, but I’m also helping myself. I can’t remember a day when I didn’t reopen my rough draft and make edits as I was giving feedback to someone else – I’ve been accidentally hypocritical way too often.
What I’ve realized is that we’ve been doing a good amount of research in class – something I wouldn’t necessarily associate with an English class. When I first walked in on Day 1, I thought I would encounter a problem with my writing style. What I now understand is that the course requires so much more critical thinking and application than I had ever done in an English class before. I came from a school in India, where the arts and literature aren’t nearly as appreciated as the sciences. What this course has done is that it blended the two of them in a way that I really enjoy. If only the class wasn’t at 8 AM!
We’ve also been learning how to edit and cut down our writing to make it more concise. As someone who goes over the word limit on a daily basis, I definitely need to improve on adding too much useless information.
We also learnt about how to write an effective thesis statement without it being too informal, being too vague or having too much redundancy.
Over the past week, I’ve also realized how important it is to be conscious of my mental well-being. Our final Unit 1 Assignment grades were posted this week, and I definitely think I could’ve done better on my project and scored a better grade. However, I decided that I needed to cut myself some slack. After all, I, like most other students, had midterms this week that I needed to study for, which resulted in multiple late-nighters, oversleeping, and running to class, which so conveniently happens to be at 8 AM.
Even in all of this chaos, we all still managed to submit the rough draft of Feeder 2.1 on time! Something worth celebrating, I’m sure.
Last Sunday was World Mental Health Day. In light of recent events that took place on campus, I think it’s quite important to acknowledge that we all sometimes need to take a step back and relax. We can do that by not beating ourselves up for lower-than-desired grades, asking for extensions on assignments if required, or waking up just a little late and attending the class on Zoom instead if a few extra minutes of sleep are needed. Our work in this class focuses on writing in health and medicine – it’s important to know that mental health is just as important as physical health, and it’s nice to see that some of us have addressed/are addressing mental health in our projects.
I’m looking forward to seeing how my final project will turn out – we’ve just submitted our Rough Draft for Feeder 2.2, and are waiting on our grades and feedback on Feeder 2.1. After what feels like forever (for me, at least) we go back to class tomorrow, and will hopefully receive some good feedback on our drafts.
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