Farewell, Writing 340

With the conclusion of this summer's writing 340 class it is time to reflect on the past and look to the future.  First of all, this class helped me get back into the swing of writing analytical papers as I really hadn't had to write research papers since the beginning of my sophomore year.  I found that by the end of the class I was able to make concise and well-founded arguments and I improved my writing overall.   Research was a huge part of this class and I not only learned how to go about finding the best research for my topics, but also learned the art of footnotes and really maximizing my research.  My favorite assignment was definitely the first one in which we were asked to analyze a documentary and characterize it as art or education. This paper allowed me to truly look at how art functions in a documentary and the way filmmakers convey messages to society.  I really enjoyed watching the documentaries at the beginning of the class and since then have actually started watching them as a hobby now! The second paper, which asked us to research academic freedom and draft an academic freedom policy for our field, was one that I found challenging but learned a lot from.  I was able to really hone in on the prevalent issues in journalism and come up with suggestions for how cases in which academic freedom is threatened should be handled in the academic environment.  I enjoyed having the liberty to make my own decisions and it made me reconsider how academic freedom is handled and how often it is actually violated.  My final project, in which I studied the connection between communication, gender studies and psychology, allowed me to really think about cross-field connections and come to my own conclusion about how gender portrayal on television sitcoms affects society.  I found that coming up with my research proposal through the in-class presentation was a really good way for me to brainstorm about what I had already found out and wanted to find out more about and I found my classmates' feedback to be very helpful in gaging the course of my final research paper.  I found class workshops to be helpful and I wish we had devoted more class time to peer editing  and workshopping.  I found blogging to be a fun and innovative way to share my thoughts with the class and have actually begun my own blog as a way of expressing myself.  As an aspiring journalist I think that blogging is a great way to communicate to the world and setting up a blog for this class was a good starting point.  I am confident that I will use the research and writing skills I learned from writing 340 in my academic endeavors and, eventually, in my career.  I enjoyed this class and feel it was a valuable learning experience.