English Composition: The Learning Experience

In English Composition, I was not expecting to learn as much as I did, and I was also not expecting to be able to apply what I did learn to anything other than the papers I was writing in that one particular class. I am the only sophomore taking this freshman writing class, and to be honest, I was not excited at first.

Over the course of the semester, I could see myself becoming more competent at seeing connections between texts, and being able to apply these intertextual relationships in my own writing. It wasn’t until about half way through the semester that I was able to see myself practicing these skills in my other classes, particularly Medical Anthropology, in which I read and analyzed three different nonfiction novels, and countless articles. I started noticing some connections between the books, and once I started noticing them, I began to see relationships to pieces of language used in English Comp. I could see evidence of Discourse, transference, and many other aspects of the course in the way the authors wrote, and what they wrote about.

I continue to be impressed by how much I am learning in a class that, at first, I did not think would be relevant to my major at all. I am glad that I took this class, and the particular section I did, with the peers I did, and the professor I did. I do not think that I would be half the competent writer I am now, and I would be clueless as to the connections between different texts in other classes, overall putting me at a disadvantage to my other classmates.