The Pursuit of Happiness: Self Evaluation

I have always found writing to be the best way for me to express myself. When my emotions are at a high or low I find comfort in setting the words in my head down. I don’t write every day, only when whatever is going on in my life is too much for me to handle. It allows me to relax, assess the situation, and be honest with myself. English 15S taught me a lot about my style of writing and myself.

Before this class I have never really had to write about my interests or myself. High school writing was more analytical essays and research papers. Since I had been doing those for so long and I did pretty well on them I thought this class would be easy. I found that writing in an analytical manner for so long caused me to struggle when I had to write about myself. I realized this back when I was writing my college essay; it was just hard to write about myself because every time I wrote an essay it was about a book. This class helped me to integrate my skills of writing analytically into writing about myself. When I write a research paper or an essay on a book I have my thesis and then just make those points and support them with quotes. I learned how to make a thesis and make my points in a less formal approach.

I learned that I actually like writing about myself. The memoir was my favorite assignment because it really made me feel like a writer. I had to choose my style of writing, create a voice, and I was writing about my life so I was of course interested in it. I never thought I’d like writing so much about my interests and myself but it has really taught me that writing is something I love to do. I read a lot of different blogs, mostly satirical ones, and I always wished I could do that. The blog posts we got to write allowed me to do that! I started to find my voice as a writer and found that I like to be a bit satirical and humorous.

There was one moment during peer review for the memoir when Sheila helped me learn something about myself. I was telling my story to Lucas and mentioned how the story is funny but at the time was horrible for me. Sheila overheard and said, “You do that don’t you? Do you look back on the past and take it with a sense of humor?” Honestly, I had never thought about that until she said it and I found it to be true. Yes I’ve had my fair share of problems in the past and I realized that when I talk about them and look back on them I do it with a sense of humor. I loved that I learned this about myself because it helped me find my voice for the memoir as well as my other writing.

This class has taught me that art is everywhere and anything we want it to be. Everything we did was about a piece of art. One of the more interesting art forms that I had not noticed to be art before was the podcast we listened to. This was one of my favorite assignments because it taught me a lot about Penn State and also about podcasts. I loved learning about how there were different acts within it and how the way they set up was strategic because it reminded me of how I write essays: I have my thesis, make my points in a logical order, and conclude it.

My eyes have been open to a world of art thanks to this class. Art really is everywhere we go and everything we do is some form of art. I’ve discovered so much about the type of art I like, Penn State, and myself from this class. I started this class thinking writing for a class was all about research papers and analytical essays and I learned that’s not what it’s all about. This class gave us freedom to write about what we wanted to in a voice we wanted to and through that I discovered things I liked and more about who I am as a writer.