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Hadassah McGill Professor Camargo English 2100 25 April 2013 Encompassing Hadassahs Skills At the beginning of the spring semester in Professor Camargos Writing About Literature course, I thought that I did a very good job at interpreting literature and that having this skill would benefit me and allow my strength to show in my articulate writing. Boy was I wrong! Not only have my writing skills weakened, in my opinion, throughout this course but my confidence as a strong writer has also be revoked. I did however take a few things from this course that will be beneficial in my future as a writer, things that are standard to any writers skill (tools for successful writing; HOCs LOCs, etc.) and things about my personal style of writing that I am still working through (strengths and weaknesses as a writer, etcetera). But more importantly, one thing I have learned about myself is that I do not like to write academically. Knowing this has helped me to realize my preferred writing style and has opened my eyes to how I really like writing in my own style (which is not to be graded or scrutinized). At the beginning of the course we were asked to write in our journals in response to Michael Myers Reading Imaginative Literature. We were asked the question what personal goals for yourself do you have for this class, both as a literature scholar and as a practicing writer? My response was that I hope to grow and mature in my writing skills. I hope to gain the discipline to not be scared to write something for fear of it being unaccepted. As far as being a literary scholar, I would like to regain a keen eye for analyzing literature so that my writing may be more effective. I reflected on my accomplishments this semester and I came out with more failures. I do think I regained my eye for analyzing literature, however, I lack discipline

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due to fear of my work not being appreciated for my own unique style of writing. My writing has not shown any improvement, but instead I have relapsed back into a repressed state of being causing me to remain stagnant in my growth as a writer. I have gained a lot of new knowledge about the art and technique of writing. I learned about some new approaches to reading, analyzing and writing about literature that I found very intriguing and useful. For example, I wrote about the short story, A Rose for Emily from the Marxist perspective. I wrote that there is a clear distinction between the wealthy and impoverished who serve the wealthy resulting in a very definite class system. I found that story to be both interesting and creepy, but looking at it from a Marxist perspective as opposed to a New Critics perspective taught me a lot about what to find and how to look for things when Im reading. In relation to essay one, I looked at Maya Angelous poem Still I Rise from a new critical perspective and I did not do a good job. Alone, my paper had the potential to be a really good analysis of the allusions found throughout Angelous poem, but I struggled with including the important historical connections and linking them to the new critical perspective. I received very good feedback that could easily make my paper stronger. Essay 2 was a little more complicated than the first. In addition to having to write about a short story we were required to find some sort of symbolism in the short story and provide secondary sources to help support our findings. When assessing this paper, I thought that my good interpretation skills would come in handy and help my paper to be strong. How wrong again I was. This, in my opinion, was the epitome of failure. I chose to examine the short story Wine by Hayashi Mariko, a Japanese writer. I saw a link between the young woman and a bottle of expensive wine. I noted the extreme caution the lady had when choosing who to give her wine to and I found symbolism in the way that women may choose their potential life-long

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mates. The author clearly writes in her work that it was as if I myself were a present wandering around in search of a recipient. I was onto something (as I always am), I just seemingly always need to push a little harder or dig a little deeper for that one more thing factor to add to and help strengthen my papers. Coming into the class, I was familiar with HOCs (higher order concerns) and LOCs (lower order concerns) from my previous experience in college level classes but I was fascinated by this middle ground called MOCs (middle order concerns). This taught me that when I am writing I need to write with things in perspective; I need to make sure that my content, ideas and concepts are all in order, followed by the clarity and readability of my paper, and then finally, the very last thing to be concerned with are things like, grammatical errors, spelling and formatting. I normally like to take care of the LOCs before I move on to anything else, but I have learned that this hinders me in the writing process. I also learned that I need to focus more on learning the proper MLA format for writing because I think this is my biggest point deduction besides my content and organization of my thoughts. When examining my growth (or lack thereof) as a writer, one thing I noticed is that I have, in fact, challenged myself. I have taken it upon myself to not take the easy way out of situations. I have actually taken the time to care about the content and character that my work ultimately portrays. I have gone to the writing center quite often and have even learned how to take constructive criticism and use it to help bolster my goal to strengthen my writing. This shows that I am somewhat resolving my fears and coming to terms with what I will face every day if I chose to write fiction or poetry (which I love). Every peer review workshop and free writing session and small paper to be glued in our writers notebook as a reminder of what excellent writers should accomplish have all been instrumental in my success as a writer.

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Whether I feel like I have grown as a writer or not will always be a controversial topic because according to my assessment of my personal strengths and weaknesses, in both categories lie the phrase I am my biggest critic and that will never change. Overcoming my weaknesses will attribute to my writing in the future and will ultimately shape the success I will have in the field, so going through this class has taught me how to be strong again and to trust in myself and the process. For that, I am truly grateful of this class.