Kathleen M. Hurley
English 102H Reflection
English 101H Reflection
English class makes me nervous. It always has. I've never been a very confident writer, perhaps because I have always been compated to other honors students, perhaps because I'm not very creative. Whatever the reason, my first days of English 101H as a first quarter freshman were stressful. Lucky for me, I found one of the most passionate instructors at UC. Professor Griegel-McCord encouraged my existing writing strenghts and pushed me to improve my weaker skills by thinking outside the box. In some ways, she pushed us all to "have a healthy disregard for the impossible" and to write beyond the obvious.
English, surprisingly not my strength.
English 101H was a great experience for me. I have never felt that English is my strong suit, but my professor helped me to improve and feel better about my writing and synthesizing skills. Synthesizing was a huge part of the 101H class. Synthesizing new ideas was a fairly new concept to me before taking this class; however Professor Griegel-Mccord showed me that good writing comes from good synthesizing. I learned that anyone can summarize the ideas of someone else, but an excellent writer can make connections between facts, ideas, and other information to produce a new idea in their writing. The ability to synthesize new ideas and read critically is a skill that carries over to all aspects of my life. Additionally, my professional goals of doing research and going to medical school will benefit greatly from such skills. I will only be able to discover something new in my research if I connect and synthesize ideas from the data my research produces. I am glad that I experienced the 101H class, and I have no doubt that it has been beneficial to my education at UC.
I have linked several pieces of my work from my 101H class. I think the improvement in my writing from the Rhetorical Analysis Essay, our first essay, to the Synthesis Essay, our final essay, is quite noticeable. My ability to think of and connect new ideas greatly improved as the course continued. I still feel that I need to continue working on relating ideas to one another, but my work in 101H is a good start. I have also attached the power-point presentation that I presented to my class as an overview of what my final paper discussed.
English 102H was another great experience for me. I chose to take the class with Professor Griegel-McCord and once again I really enjoyed her class. The class size was significantly smaller; there were only about 11 students. A smaller class meant that there was much more individual attention and time for feedback. We often used class time to discuss our personal questions about the research process and then receive tips and thoughts from our classmates. We also took a lot of time to peer review our pieces as we went through the entire process. The process I am referring to is the research process. Professor McCord chose to break up our research process into three “microthemes” in which we first identified the problem, then outlined all of the causes related, and then we wrote our final microtheme with solutions and personal thoughts about the problem. I chose to research the issue of the lack of nutrition in preventive medical care. I was drawn to the research topic as it related to my major and was something that I personally have seen as an issue in my own health care plan. This research experience was unique because we did break the process up into three main parts. I found that breaking the whole project up into smaller parts made the experience manageable and more enjoyable. On the whole, English 102H furthered my writing skills, but also my research and problem solving skills. The final project for this class was a multi-media presentation in which I chose to create a website designed to teach kids healthy eating needs to start young, but can also be fun! http://www.wix.com/hurliefun2/kids-nutrition
I have linked several pieces of my work from my 102H. I have attached all three microthemes(1, 2, 3) in which my research project was broken up. I have also attached a document called Multi Media Proposal which outlines my plan to create a website geared toward teaching kids how to eat healthy. Additionally, I have attached a document showing an example of the revision process and how substantially a paragraph in a paper can change over time. The final document attached is my final reflection that was written as a final paper for the class. The reflection document gives a good description of the research process and the issues I had as I went through, and it also describes the differences I would make to the project as a whole if more time permitted. The documents attached are all final copies of the files, but each document was heavily edited before the final was turned in. I found, as a whole, that I revised my work more thoroughly and thoughtfully than I did during 101H.
