Course Reflection
Throughout my first semester at CCNY, I have been working in the FIQWS class of Food, History and Society with Professor Rodwell. The class was intended to help us incoming freshman with our writing abilities so that we could use it later on in our college life. From the very beginning is was made to me that this class was not for fooling around and that I should give it always a 100% to pass the course with good grade. Since before entering this class, I knew that I had issues such as organization and repetition in my writing, which was something I hoped I could perfectionate wild taking this course. I also thought that the inclusion of food topics would make the course interesting before entering the class. Well the course may have been the most interesting to take but it did help me become a better writer, even if it wasn’t by much. The class did thought me some basics on how to write better, which was really what I was hoping for.
The course consisted of many assignments, this made every upcoming assignment more difficult than the last. I personally recall by starting with ideas for our narrative essay, and a few weeks later I had to do research on an assigned topic. The class went by really quickly, but that didn’t take away the fact that each new assignment turned to be harder than the last. Not only that but also the harsh grades given by professor Rodwell. This would make people think that the class was really obnoxious, but this was made for the benefit of the students, which is something I am really grateful for because I actually had my grades the hard way instead of how grades were handed to me sometimes in high school. In the class I got to participate in some activities such as group work and peer review. This helped me in fixing my essays and also in understanding the course material to greater detail. Which is something that I actually did like from the course.
This FIQWS class also taught me about 2 important things that should be consider while writing an essay, rhetorical situations and also course learning outcomes. When I had to write my essays before this class, I never thought of these 2 elements before. But now I know that they are useful because they helped me determine if my final outcome is following the correct format to approach a reader, and also strategies to actually develop/incorporate to my final draft of my essays. Components such as the stance, exigence, the audience, its genre, or an analysis of drafting and/or engagement of social aspects of a written process are components that are important in the development of an essay which this class taught me.
While taking this course, I also had to create self-reflections of each assignments, in which I reflected my writing and explain what I did right and what I did wrong, and also how I could fix it in other assignments. This aspect of the course did help me, it made me reflect and also see were I had gone wrong in my writing process, Although most of the times I couldn’t recognize it at first. Creating self-reflections looked like a waste of time to me, but in reality it has helped me realize where I have gone wrong and what I have to do to fix it in the future. This is an aspect of this course that I really think did helped me for the most part improve my writing.
This FIQWS class has helped me improve some aspects of my writing, as well as helped me improve on some mistakes I was making. This course also taught me new components that I could use while writing to create a better outcome, which is what I really appreciate from this class. Although I still commit many mistakes and still need to work on my writing, this class has helped me learn new things that will help me later on during my college years and perhaps maybe even after college, which is what I actually take from this course.
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