At the beginning of Summer, I found myself dreading my 8 am English class, but I knew it was a requirement that I had to complete. Now, at the end of summer, I am glad to say that I have really enjoyed this class. While math and science classes are more what I am interested in, I was surprised when I enjoyed writing my papers. ENC 2135 was more than just a class to me. I really liked the whole experience. Factors that I enjoyed include the instructor, the classroom environment, and the course load. Often times you get stuck with a teacher who does not care about your grade or your progress of knowledge in the class. Mat Wenzel was the opposite of this. Right off the bat he created set goals to get an A. When I attended his office hours, I could tell he really cared and wanted to make sure I would succeed. During workshop meetings, I felt like it was easy to talk to him and he would always give me resourceful feedback on my papers to help me improve my writing. Every day when I walk into class, I am greeted with “good morning!”, it makes a big difference to hear this every morning because students feel welcomed and acknowledged.
For project 1, my focus was on a community from high school. I wrote about joining the bowling team and its impact on my character and my future as a college student. Out of project 1 and 2, I found it easier to write the first project. I had so much passion already built up about the bowling community that it was easy to share my personal story about my experience joining the team. I got an 88 on the project which I knew was good, but I still wanted to do better. When I told Mat I wanted to revise my essay, he was shocked and convinced me the grade was good enough. This was very eye opening. College and high school are very different. While I am used to getting perfect grades on assignments, college is more difficult and I cannot always expect to get a perfect score on every assignment.
When I realized I had to write a 3,000 word research paper, I was frightened. I have had experience writing 30-page competition books about companies, but that was with a partner by my side. When I started to write, I felt like it was easy to develop my thoughts because of all the research I was required to conduct. The interview that was assigned in the class was very beneficial. First off, researching the university for a community that I find interesting was fun and eye opening to all the support that is available. Visiting the Hillel center by myself and speaking to others who have similar interests as me really got me excited for college and joining clubs and activities. Once I learned about the mission and goals of the community I felt involved and took this paper seriously. I found myself writing a 15 page paper which at first seemed impossible, so I guess you can say nothing is impossible. On the second project, I scored an 89. I was surprised to find that I did better on this project than the first but it just boosted my confidence that I can write about anything if I put my mind to it. One thing I really appreciated was how Mat separated the huge paper into small assignments such as the research proposal and community proposal. When it came time to write the paper, these little assignments could all be combined and edited to easily complete the paper.
For the third project, we had to create 3 genres pertaining to our research topic. For my first genre, I created a poster that promoted one of the events that Hillel was holding. I thought it was important to post this around campus and on social media to gain awareness of Hillel and promote student involvement. My second genre was an open letter to potential students that discussed what Hillel is, enticing them to join the community. My third genre was an Instagram page. This Instagram page would socially invite students to participate. On the Instagram page, I posted the flyer that was hung around campus, and the open letter that was sent to students. Overall I am satisfied with my work and I feel like I have learned a lot from this class and Mat.