Reflection

Just the thought about taking a writing class gives me nausea. I knew being in a UWP course during the summer would be challenging, but I never thought it was going to be so public. Having a professor read my pieces is frightening but having my classmates reading and comment on my writing is daunting. Before enrolling in UWP, I was not very confident about my work. However, as the days went by, I became more positive about my work. Based on the comments and grades I have received so far, it seems that my work has improved. Yet I still have concerns. Some of the feedback I received sounded negative. The comments I received made me feel like my writing was not good enough or not satisfying enough. My posts were followed by questions and more questions that dragged me into new ideas and topics. To be honest, I found the course difficult. I had a hard time being specific and developing evidence for my argument. Therefore, I had complications finishing my blogs. Overall, the feedback I received on my comments helped me to be open-minded and to consider other possible questions and opinions.

After experiencing this unusual method of teaching, I still have reservations towards blogging. I found myself having trouble setting my blogs the way I wanted them to be displayed on my profile. I usually had technical problems. During my Final, I had a hard time making my keywords bold. I spent a whole hour trying figure out the proper way of posting my work. However, because I was running out of time, I decided to leave it as it was. I sincerely hope that I never have deal with blogging in any future writing courses. If in the future I were to enroll in a course in which it was required for me to use a blogging system, perhaps that would be incentive enough to make me drop the course from my schedule. Discussion, however, was very enjoyable part of the class. I found the topics stimulating and thought provoking. I particularly enjoyed the sections on identity and technology. Most of the time, however, I found it difficult to join into the discussion because I feel self-conscious speaking in public.

One of the most interesting parts of this class was the group project. Going into it I felt like it was a great idea. As I got more involved into it, however, I began to see the consequences of participating in something like this. I sometimes felt unethical about what I had to do in order to find information about the website. While I was only there for experimental purposes, there are people that are on that website actually looking for love. I felt a bit uncomfortable with the idea that the messages that I was getting were from real people thinking that they had really found someone that they could connect with. Additionally, I sometimes felt discomforted by the topic of conversations that some of the men would think it was appropriate to bring up.

Having to attend the UWP 1 during the summer was a fascinating yet tough experience for me. As I mentioned on my first blog about listening to different opinions, I feel that this was a great opportunity to become more open minded about topics that I had not fully encountered in the past.