Darian Heers

ENC 2135

Mat Wenzel

5 December 2017

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            At the start of the first project, I had no clue what I was going to do as my community. Of course, I had been in multiple clubs in high school, but I really hadn’t found one that embodied who I was or all that I stood for. I had contemplated doing the National Honor Society, for that was a big part of my life, but it didn’t really directly affect my future career. One day in class while we were discussing our possible communities for project 1, Mat brought up the idea that we could do our family. This immediately struck a chord in me since my family is one of the most important things in my life. They directly influence all of my values and my future career. Now came the part of choosing the text that I would analyze in my essay. For the first serious draft that we had done, I chose a poem that I found that I felt very much represented my family and its values. The only problem was that my family had never read it before. So, while writing my paper, I called up my family one night, after having sent them a copy of the poem earlier in the day, and asked them to tell me their thoughts on it. I gave them no background of what I was doing in this project or how I myself had reacted to it. I included their reactions in my essay. When it came time to have a conference about my essay, Mat gave me some really great pointers. I feel the most important tip he gave me was to change my text this essay, to a note that my mom had wrote when she was moving me into my dorm. He said the poem was not personal to my family where as the note was. This greatly helped the tone and message of my first project.

            The second project was where I had the most trouble. The whole concept of it being a research project on my future community, which by the way only included two people, while also analyzing a particular text. Then came along the idea that we had to propose a question that we had to answer. I was totally lost! I thought we just had to answer the question of “How does a particular text affect and circulate throughout your community?’ When I talked to my classmates and found out they all were making up certain questions that directly related to their community, I felt I was doing the whole thing wrong. The first conference I had with Mat about project 2 really helped me. He gave me advice on how the question was just supposed to facilitate your research and that we mainly just have to include the main components that he described on his piktochart. He also told me that everyone’s ratio of that piktochart information will look different based on what fits their essay the best, so don’t get stressed out over that too. After I turned in my final draft for the second project, I felt very confident in my paper, yet when I received my grade back I really didn’t know what to think anymore. So, I set up another conference for Mat. Here we discussed precisely what was lacking in my first paper and the specific items that he was looking for after the revision. Now it was time for my appointment at the RWC. My tutor, Gabrielle, was very nice and I could tell she knew very much about writing, though much of what she said was just a reiteration of Mat’s original comments. So, with Mat’s advice and comments, along with my tips from the RWC, I set out to revise my paper. When turning in this final revision, I felt very confident, I could tell my paper had journeyed a long way from where I started.

            The third project was my personal favorite. I knew exactly what message I wanted to shout to the world. I originally wanted to talk about the need of female military physicians, yet I settled just to discuss the need for military physicians in general as it would relate to a far larger audience. I came up with my three genres fairly quickly. I knew I wanted to do something at the College of Medicine here, since it was something that was easily accessible, but could also make a huge difference. The other genres, I chose to help circulate my message effectively. Mat was very helpful in critiquing the ideas and drafts of the genres that I sent to him along the way and answered all of the questions that I had for him.

            Overall, I feel that Mat and this class have greatly increased my ability to write and my perspective on different genres and their effectiveness.