Blog 16 – Semester Review

Looking back on this past semester, I feel like I’ve taken several steps to becoming a more knowledgeable writer. I think the three papers I wrote this semester were some of the most challenging I’ve written yet, but in the end I feel that because of this they also turned out to be some of my best writings. After discovering wordpress, I also decided to start doing casual writing on the side in a secondary blog, which has been a really great stress relief/creative release for me.

When it comes to our selected readings, I found both Ragtime and In the Lake of the Woods to be intriguing books that forced me to think critically about their contents including narrative elements, historical context, dialogue, and much more. My main question concerning the class deals with our two novels. I am curious as to how Ms. Weaver came about discovering that Ragtime and In the Lake of the Woods shared many similarities? If I would have read the two books separately and without searching for textual parallels, I would have thought the two novels to be extremely different from one another. However, through the analysis that was encouraged in our ENG 112 course, I came to learn that the two do share a lot.

The portion of this class that I had the most trouble with was the metaphor section. Since we covered this section quicker than the others, I felt like we didn’t have as much as an opportunity to dissect and explore metaphors more analytically. I knew how to identify a metaphor before this course, but I hadn’t had much experience breaking down metaphors and picking them apart piece by piece. It made selecting a topic a little tougher, but once I figured it out, it flowed more easily.

Overall, I really enjoyed ENG 112. I felt fairly challenged and I believe I have worked toward bettering my writing and my thought processes directed at analyzing other’s writings. It has certainly been an enriching course that caused me to develop a deeper interest in writing.

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