With only three weeks left until finals and the end of the semester, most students are looking forward to wrapping up and finishing the semester strong, and hoping that their GPA didn’t take too big of a hit. It was a somewhat relaxed week in terms of homework for ENGL 105i, although it was still full of stress from other classes. Luckily the weather helped ease the mood, with most days being full of sunshine and warm weather, in addition to the ever-present pollen dusting every surface on campus. Although I spent most of the week cooped up in my dorm, plenty of other students took advantage of the nice weather to sit out on the quad and get their work done under the sun.
In terms of work for ENGL 105i, the week was full of workshops and collaboration, in addition to a lesson. There luckily wasn’t too much homework due before Tuesday, except for look over some materials for class. On Tuesday, April 13, we split into groups and looked over some old students’ essays to find the essays’ forms. We broke each essay down by paragraph and looked for the topic, genre, thesis, and main points of the paragraph. Personally, this was helpful because it gave me an example essay of how my feeder assignment should look, and also gave me a chance to improve my own reading analysis skills. We then regrouped to discuss what we’d found, and only 3 groups could go before class ended. It was interesting to see how everyone was able to break down each essay, and to me it was also interesting to see video essay scripts, since I’m not too familiar with the genre of video analyses. I also found writing in the humanities to be really interesting, since there is a lot of leeway in what a person can write – unlike past units that involved a lot of research and data, this unit is a lot more reminiscent of creative writing, with more liberty to analyze a story however one pleases.
Thursday was definitely the more stressful day of the week, although compared to some other days of the semester it wasn’t actually that bad. Before class, we were expected to write a rough draft for Feeder 3.2, which is our script for the video essay, and submit in as a forum to be analyzed and edited later in class. On Thursday, April 15, we wrapped up our analyses for past video essays from last class, and then we jumped straight into the workshop. Everyone was at a different stage of writing, with some people having almost finished their drafts, while others having down an outline and a general idea. I fell into the latter, with my essay barely being more than a few ideas with no real direction or place to go. I was luckily given advice by my partner, so now I have a general idea of where to go and how to start. Not having data to write about is both a blessing and a curse, since on one hand, no data means there is less room to mess up on facts, but on the other hand, there is less solid information present, meaning more thought and effort is required to drive an essay forward. After the workshop session, Paul showed us a PowerPoint on how to make a good presentation, giving us good pointers and things to incorporate into the video to keep an audience engaged.
A lot has also happened in the world outside of ENGL 105i. Vaccines are now available to all adults in the US, and I really hope that everyone gets vaccinated soon so that the rise in COVID cases finally goes down for good. Although the Johnson and Johnson vaccine rollout got halted for potential blood clotting, I think the US will still be able to get its population vaccinated quickly and efficiently I’m getting my second dose on Tuesday, so I am expecting be knocked out for a day or two and be immune to the virus afterwards. In addition to the vaccine, everyone is also focusing on school for the final stretch, since the end is near where everything ramps up until the last final, after which the joys of a hopefully normal-ish summer can be enjoyed by all.
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