The course assignments seemed odd at first because I have never been asked to write about music. I learned plenty about music classification that enlightened the way I regarded music. In this assignment, I had to learn to find different trustworthy assignments in order to a valid source. The music I chose was so different than the popular audience in America that it was a bit difficult to find trustworthy articles, but when I found them I learned to not only read the article carefully but learn about the author who wrote it. I wrote my essay on Korean R&B which I only found a total of only 6 or 7 articles in English and only 4 of those articles were trustworthy. This essay, in particular, was difficult research wise but it did show me how many articles might not be the best to use in the future.
The discussions that we had in class was interesting to be a part of because you get to see different ways people reason or perceive things such as when we were detangling the ending of Shiloh. Many of the students I spoke to outside of class thought that Norma Jean was going to commit suicide while others simply thought that she was waving goodbye to her husband. Other discussions were much different and based on paintings such as Father and Son by George Condo. Many of us had different perceptions of what the painting could mean. Many thought at first that it was a relationship between a father and son but when we all did some research on the other works George condo has done many of us changed our minds and decided to focus on other parts of the painting such as the women-like hands or the cartoon-like hands some even pointed out the different sides of the face could have different meanings. All of the different views on paintings, books or articles have allowed me to view things differently when I am writing my essays.
This class has really helped me improve as a writer. The course assignments have developed my skills and the feedback by my peers and professor was the extra push I’ve been needing. Additionally, I improved my reading, drafting and self-editing knowledge. The assignments are given where helpful in developing these skills especially when we peer edited our work. I would most of the time view other people’s word choices and compare them to mine so that I could improve my essays. Thanks to this class I can successfully use my resources, understand them deeply through critical thinking and analysis, synthesize them and write an essay about it that correctly follows the rules of language without abusing it.
