My Thoughts on the Class

As you may or may not know, I am a junior taking this class meant for freshmen.  Going into the class, I thought it was going to be a breeze.  I thought I was going to walk in, write a few papers, and walk out with an A.  That was not the case at all.  I was a bit discouraged at the beginning of the class when I got my first papers back.  The grades were not where I thought they were going to be.  I think a little of that was because it was a new teacher, with new expectations.  However, looking back at the papers, they were not well written.  I wasn’t putting enough effort into the class, and once I did, my grades improved.  I learned a lot from this class: something I wasn’t expecting.  Perhaps the most important idea that I am taking away is that not all writing is created equal.  What I mean is that all writing should be geared toward your specific audience. This may seem obvious, but it wasn’t something that I consciously considered before this class. The paper that I write for one of my engineering class presenting a product as a viable solution to a problem is going to be different that the paper that we wrote for this class, as the first has a different audience than the second. The first might be written for a committee reviewing the product for safety, while our papers were written for lawmakers.  It’s extremely important to consider this when writing anything, as it could be the difference between convincing your audience or not.