Reflection
Coming into this class I was a little worried because I did not know what to expect. In high school I had mastered the five paragraph essay. Thesis, supporting detail, supporting detail, supporting detail, conclusion. I had it down to a science where I could start it the night before and turn it in the next day and receive an A. When I thought of college english class I was expecting to have to write extremely long, very serious, and professionally structured papers. That turned out not to be the case at all. I was actually surprised how laid back the class was. I have never really been given the opportunity to have full control over what I wrote. I was also never not given an outline of how the paper should be structured. This was a brand new concept to me and took a little bit of thinking but I was able to find a voice through my writing.
My first essay called “BELLA” is about the time I got my dog. When we were given the topic of writing about a memory I had no idea what I wanted to write about. My first thought was to write about something sad because for some reason the sad events are always the best to read. I started to think about some of the things that happened in my life that weren’t the best and realized that no one was forcing me write about something sad. I did not really want to write about something sad either. So I decided to write about one of the happiest moments of my life, when I got a puppy, instead. This was a major moment in the timeline of my life. I can clearly remember how I was before I got Bella and how I was after I got Bella. I had a lot of fun writing this essay and the words came so easily to me as I relived this part of my life. I hope whoever reads this essay can feel the amount of joy and love I have in my heart for this memory.
The next assignment was a group project and we were to create a magazine about anything we wanted. The magazine was to contain research articles pertaining to what you chose your magazine to be about. My group decided to do a world travel magazine. We each decided to choose a country and focus on food, culture, and fashion. I chose Italy and wrote two articles, one on fashion, and one on food. I am a fashion merchandising major so clothes, shoes, and accessories are one of my favorite things to talk about. My fashion article is a guide for any young woman traveling to Italy and looking for what she should wear. I wanted to give a little bit of history of how Italy became such a huge fashion capital in the world before I got into what you should wear while traveling. In the early stages of this article I realized I couldn’t just give one general type of outfit to wear so I split it up into Spring/Summer seasons and Fall/Winter seasons. Within each of these sections I discussed day and night outfits along with what accessories you should wear. My next article is about Italian food and was actually a bit of a struggle for me. It was not a lack of information that was the issue, I was super excited to write it at first because I love food and had so many ideas. I think the reason I struggled so much was because I had way to many ideas. I tried to get them all down on paper and it turned into a hot mess. I tried to fix it but I was so displeased with it I basically started over from scratch and rewrote it for my portfolio. In the article I go through each meal of the day talk about what is usually done for that meal. I am now pleased with the final product.
Poetry is not my strongest form of writing but I don’t mind it and I think it can be really beautiful. My poem “Waves” is about a fairly traumatic time of when I got stung by a jellyfish. I wanted to to have the poem start off really calm and soothing but then turn into something you would not expect. Once I had gotten to the part of where I got stung I was brainstorming ways to end my poem. At that point I had not thought of the title yet. When I came up with “Waves” I thought it might be cool if I ended the poem like I started it in a calm way and focus on the waves that crash against the shore. I wanted this poem to be descriptive and I wanted it to trigger the readers senses.
My next poem was to be written about an object. I was trying to think of something complicated that might be hard to catch onto. Something that may or may not seem deeper and have more meaning than it actually does. I could not come up with anything that I felt that strong about so I decided to simplify what I wanted to do and tried thinking of something I use everyday. That is when I came up with “My Bed”. My bed is something I use every single day. My bed back home is much more comfortable than my one here so I wrote it about that one. I wanted this poem to be fun and easy to read so I made a series of couplets.
The first poem we were asked to write about anything we wanted. Sometimes when we are given opportunities like this I can’t pick something because there are so many things I could write about and I can’t focus my thoughts. I was walking to school and thinking about what I should write about and then it him me, let me write about my walk to school. I have been living in Florence for three months and it is such a unique experience. My walk to school is extremely different from any of my friends back home. In “Walks to School” I simply describe the normal things I see everyday, in what I now call home, on my way to school.
My last poem is called “Distorted Dancers”. I chose to write about this pice of art because I saw it in the Peggy Guggenheim museum in Venice. I remember being captivated by this painting when I saw it in real life so when we were asked to write about a piece of art I thought of this one immediately. A lot of people will just look at this painting and just see it as abstract art. They wont stop to look at it because its not a painting of anything. The longer you look at the painting the more things you start to see. More things start to emerge out of this painting that you would not see if you just took a quick glance at it. This is where I came up with the At first glance.. At second glance.. pattern.
