Criticism is possibly the best thing one person can give another. Criticism is like little packets of cheat sheets, or knowledge and giving that to someone can really benefit them. However, taking it and learning how to decode those little packets is the challenge. For me, I have learned to take it and learn from it, not take offense and this has helped me greatly. In a class design such as this one, it is important to be able to take criticism and become comfortable with the aspect of making your work public. At first, this took time for me as I felt very self conscious about the prospect of people seeing my work and seeing the flaws. To be honest, I was struggling quite a lot in the beginning since I did not really have any confidence in my work. However, as time went on, I learned that as long as I gave it my all, that it would be fine. After all, that is all a person can do, is it not?
While on the topic of giving it my all, I have done quite a lot of extra credit activities and taken time to come up with other ways to earn points. I do not just separate time for this course, I pour large amounts of time into this class, often at the expense of sleep. As a result, I do not feel disappointed in myself when it comes to this class. I put a large amount of work and effort into it and the results should speak for themselves. As for having room for improvement, I am learning things as time goes on. There is Always room for improvement, so it is difficult for me to focus on specific details, but if I had to choose three things I’ve improved on it would be: confidence, word usage and research skill. As I continue to improve on these traits and others, it will be translated into my future work.
As for the class, the style is different from what I’m used to. My entire life I have been accustomed to the traditional style of writing (paper and pen). This class is a mixture of traditional style writing (summaries/annotated bibliographies) with a touch of modern style. Overall, as I have been creating summaries and such, I have learned how to research more efficiently and effectively. In the past, when I was conducting research, I did not really know how to identify which sources were appropriate to use and which are not. This class has also taught me to be aware of my audience. Before, when I was writing I would assume the audience knew the things I knew. However, this class has taught me to watch how I write things and not to assume that people understand the same things I understand. As a result, my writing has improved greatly since now I pay attention to my audience and adjust my writing to fit the context.
To put simply, this class is a perfect fit for me and I am grateful for being in this class with such a great teacher.