I will be the first to admit that I am not a great reader and when I found out that the freshmen this year were given the opportunity to make their own schedules I tried to find a class that would not involve much reading. When I looked up INTD-105 classes several pages of different genres popped up and I chose Risks, Rewards, and Rent-paying. I prematurely judged this class on the basis of its name and assumed that it would be a class to do with financial decisions. My expectation of this course was that I would learn about business deals and have to write papers about them just to get an average grade because I was never the greatest writer in the world, but I was wrong. Instead it focused on interactions between people and how changing the order of what you say can have two very different outcomes. Throughout the course I became more aware of the dangers of a quick glance and became more interested to look beyond the surface.
In elementary school after I would finish my homework I would go and play with the other kids in my neighborhood and I never had a passion for reading, even when my parents would put one right in front of me. Throughout middle and high school I never found a drive to pick up a book on my own unless it was Percy Jackson. I have always unintentionally distanced myself from any sort of English related class and brought myself closer to a world involving math and science. When I discovered “Risks, Rewards, and Rent-paying” I thought I struck gold because it would be an English class that plays to my strengths.
To say I was a kid that cares about grades would be an understatement, five minutes after class ranks were released in High school I was down at the office. My obsession with my grades came from my competitiveness and always wanting to have the best grades possible that I often ignored understanding the material and learned for the wrong reasons. Several times a bad grade would send me spiraling into a frenzy about how much it would hurt my grade and if my life was over. Coming into a class that does not grade by what many people would refer to as “normal” left me in shock. I didn’t know how to excel if there was no grade given to me. In so many of my previous classes I would get upset at my English teachers because I would receive a grade that I believe I did not deserve and there was no arguing my side because there is no definitive right answer which always drove me crazy. Jesse Stommel talks about this very situation in his writing and how “ungrading can reduce conflict between teachers and students bring them closer together”(Stommel). Learning that I wasn’t alone was a huge relief and that I could focus more in my INTD class than worrying about what my grade is gonna be at the end of the semester.
When constructing an argument I was always taught to establish my point of view and then refute the other side in detail later. In high school a 5 paragraph essay template was always given to us containing one introductory paragraph, two supporting paragraphs, one paragraph to recognize the other side’s views, and a conclusion. Although it provides an effective format for an essay when given a specific prompt it does not work as well when a broad prompt is given. While reading They Say, I Say by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein they proposed the idea of acknowledging the other side first so the reader can be aware of the two sets of views during the entire essay. Clearly establishing the otherside will put an emphasis on the side you are arguing for. During the “Bloodchild” essay it helped me to clearly define what my article was arguing for and against in the beginning and leave out the vagueness that was emphasized in high school. Even though this helps in writing I have found it is more useful when I am speaking to others. Thanksgiving break allowed me to try it out with a large number of people. It did not matter if I was talking about school or in a discussion about the Buffalo Bills, by putting the weaknesses of my argument to bed first allowed for my position to appear stronger. Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein emphasize the use of templates that all stem from the basic formula of they say, I say. One of my new favorites to use is in their “Templates for Agreeing”(Graff, Birkenstein 64). I used one last night during the Thursday night football game between the New England Patriots and the Pittsburgh Steelers when my roommate said that “Jason Kelce is a better center than Travis Kelce is a tight end”. Although I disagreed with his statement I did not want to make it seem as if he was all wrong because after all it is an opinion about sports and there is no way of proving either one of us right. I ended up saying “Although Jason Kelce is one of the best centers in the league, Travis Kelce has been the undisputable best tight end in the league ever since Gronkowski retired”. Even though I did not establish my opinion right away it still became clear right after I summarized his argument. Taking my time and slowing down allowed me to develop my idea further.
When I get feedback on essays I write, the most common tip I receive is to slow down and take my time, including my “Bloodchild” essay. Too often I rush through an idea because I do not have a complete understanding of what I am trying to say. My first “Bloodchild” essay wasn’t packed in with too much information because I did not know how to write an essay but because I only had a slim understanding of “Bloodchild” itself. At the beginning of the semester we watched “The danger of a single story”, a Ted talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Adichie talks about how often she was misjudged by someone based because she was from Africa. She recognizes that books, stories and news headlines all portray Africa very differently from what she knows and it’s not because the articles are wrong but because the articles are an incomplete representation of Africa. I did not realize until now that the reason I struggled with the “Bloodchild” essay was because I had an incomplete story in my head. Despite rereading the book several times to hopefully get a better understanding it never made sense to me at that time. I never fully understood the story until long after I turned it in when we talked through the story in class and small groups several times. When I went back to reread what I wrote I found out that a majority of the essay was inaccurate to the story and Octavia Butler’s intentions while writing the book. Now that I feel that I truly understand “Bloodchild” , if I went back and did a second rewrite of my “Bloodchild” essay it would be far more detailed and better get at the main idea of the book because I no longer have an incomplete story to base it off of.
My expectations for this INTD-105 writing class were completely different from what it actually was. It was in fact not a business writing class but one where we studied interactions between people in several different scenarios. Although my skills are nowhere near perfect I have vastly improved over the course of the semester due to the fact that I could focus on learning and improving instead of obsessing over my grades. This semester I was able to slow down and form an idea based on a complete picture with all the information available to me.
