saying goodbye to your sour patch kids

This school semester has been completely different from what I expected and this English class was probably the best English class I have ever had. Coming into this semester I thought I would completely hate my first college English class because I was never really too fond of my English classes I had in high school. I have even taken English 101, which is a dual credit course I took in high school from Greenville tech, and did not like it either. I guess the reason that I did not like the English classes I had before was because they seemed to prepare me for what I thought a college English class would consist of; which I thought would be endless papers and pointless books.
My transition to Clemson was not the easiest thing to do but this class and you really helped me through it all. I do not exactly want to say that you were motherly but you seem to actually care about our well-being and liked to see us come in with a smile on our faces, which was something I completely did not expect from a college professor. I really appreciated all the times you would bring in treats for the class after a big assignment, which is something I will truly miss and probably not have with my other professors.
Though difficult for me at first I really came to appreciate the topic on rhetoric we had in class. Whenever I would look at an advertisement or a movie poster I never really took the time to acknowledge all the rhetoric devices used to make it or why it may look the way it does and the meaning behind it. Though annoying sometimes I liked the weekly blogs we did. Before attending the class I have never done a blog and it was a great and creative assignment for me. My favorite of all the assignments was the multimedia assignment we have just finished. It was a little hard to pick a topic at the beginning because the medium of the assignment was so broad but once I got the ball rolling it seemed to fun to be an assignment.
The only thing I did not enjoy in the class was the research argument assignment we did. I feel like the assignment was a little too broad for me and once I picked a topic it was a little hard to find scholarly sources to back up my claims. It was also a little difficult trying to tie my visual into the paper to back up my claims and I am sure with many other people in the class it was also a little difficult to argue a side of an argument without having some kind of bias, which was one of the main problems I had with my argument. Besides all of the problems I had with the paper I really enjoyed your class and I will really miss being your sweet sour patch kids.

English 103

            English has never been one of my favorite subjects and so going into a college level English course I expected IB-like papers every week, lots of non-fiction reading, and being forced to learn arbitrary rules that I am unlikely to ever need use of outside of an English class. This class was nothing like I expected. Honestly, this class has made me have less of a dislike for English.

            English 103 was a class that I had the ability to learn from and did. It helped me improve my writing process as well as my writing. I was able to learn how to better construct a research paper and was able to learn what a thesis truly was. The paper aspect of English 103 was not as hard as my brain expected it to be. The papers given did succeed in making me constantly busy though. The visit to the writing center was extremely helpful and I hope that this is included into future classes, though I would suggest incorporating it earlier on in the paper because by the time we had to go there was little the center could do to help us. Also, I loved the interaction and caring that you showed us throughout the class. Very few of our teachers do that and it was nice to see it on a big college campus like Clemson’s. I also really appreciate that when we had many things going on, you would extend our deadlines by a couple days to allow to feel less overwhelmed. I enjoyed this class and its focus on rhetorical analysis though rhetorical analysis annoyed me greatly. This class did a wonderful job in conveying the wonders of English to us and your teaching style was great.

            I wish that we had delved further into the writing process, maybe to the point of breaking it down into steps. Though the process is something we all know, it is something that is easily forgotten in the daily life. This class only touched on the writing process and in fact made it just a reading outside of class. Also, I wish the class had included more discussion. Discussion helps most people when figuring out ideas because they can bounce them off of one another. Also, discussion would have helped the class become more familiar with one another and would have broken those silences that we all hate. This class should have included at least one book analysis. This is a skill that everyone needs to learn that they may not have been taught in high school. Despite these minor things, I loved English 103 and am very glad it was my first college English class. The class was highly developed and helped me greatly in all things English.

            Truly, I am sad to see this class go. It’s hard to believe that this semester is already over. I’m honestly distraught at the thought of leaving this class, these people, and our wonderful teacher. Thank you for putting up with us on our best and our worse days.

Final Blog Post

I first entered this English class thinking that it would be the hardest thing that I had ever done. Turns out that it was actually a whole new type of English class that I had never had before. This class was unlike any of the English classes that I have had before. Most of my other English classes that I have taken have been all about reading long boring book and then writing long boring papers. In no English class have I ever had so much fun as I had in this one. Even though creating a web page with an essay attached was a lot of hard work, it was probably one of the coolest English projects that I have ever done. 

The thing that I will take away from this class that will help me the most is the analysis of rhetoric. In my previous English classes we had learned about things such as logos, pathos, and ethos but had never discussed any of them into debt. Or maybe this was the first class where I actually understood what they were due to the accompanying visuals that we would look at so often. Unlike how English classes taught me new things, this class used pictures which I haven’t discussed or used since my early years of elementary school. This class helped me not only analyze the boring words of a paper, but the pictures that accompanied them. I learned that almost everything we see and do during our normal lives can be analyzed when previously only books were analyzed. Now, when I look at advertisements, I messages instead of just images. I never really thought about how comics were there to leave messages instead of just entertain the reader. So, this class opened up my eyes and allowed me to see stuff that I had never seen before. 

Of course, just like in every English class, we had to write multiple papers. This was and will always be my least favorite part of any English class. But what we wrote about was actually fun. A paper on the Avengers movie poster- color me shocked. How could English end up being interesting? Then I wrote a paper on child slavery in India which opened my eyes to some of the things that happen outside of the USA. Finally, the paper for the multimedia project was actually easy because we described what we did for our multimedia project. These things, whether or not they had to be 3000 words, helped me to develop my writing skills and become a better writer. By making us do different parts of the paper at a time, you also helped the outcome of the paper and made it better than it would have been if I put it off until the end. 

In this class, there was really nothing at all that I wanted to pursue further. All of the things covered were covered well and I think that I learned a whole lot of information. If one thing had to be done again, I would like to have done more debates because those were super fun and interesting. Your class has been the most fun English class that I have taken and you shouldn’t change it one bit.

It's finally over

            When I entered my first college English class, I was a little hesitant at first. I never was any good at English in high school and did not enjoy the subject from my personal experiences. I thought we would be doing the same thing that I did in high school. These tasks included reading “meaningful” works of literature I had never heard of and then have to do an educated discussion on the material. Fortunately for me, this was not the case for your class. Your class differed greatly from what I was used to in high school. It felt like the class was more open and relaxed than what I was used to. You also tried to connect with us on a more personal level than any of my teachers ever did in high school. I also appreciate the large amount of time we had for projects and how lenient you were if we asked for more time to complete them. This allowed me to have one less stressful class this semester. Also, the fact that there was no exam EVER made me a very happy camper.

            The most obvious thing I learned from this class was rhetorical analysis of just about everything. You made analyze just about everything for a good amount of the semester. Although I cannot remember the three types of rhetoric, I can now better analyze images and advertisements rather than only describing what they look like to people. Rhetoric is a nice skill but I think the most important thing I learned from this class was how to be a better writer. I did not enjoy having to write multiple essays one having to be no shorted than 3000 words, but I believe this made me become a better writer. I learned how to properly research a topic with scholarly sources and not Wikipedia to give my argument powerful and supported. I also learned proper organization in writing a paper. I liked how you gave us different due dates that led up to the final draft of our paper. Having to do an outline, rough draft, and works cited beforehand helped me personally organize my paper effectively without having to stress out on what to do next for my paper.

            I did enjoy your English class. It was nice to go to your class in the middle of the day and just chill. You had a lot of fun activities such as the two debates on vampires v. zombies and Dwight Schrute v. Barney Stinson. However, I am a math and sciences kind of guy and still do not enjoy the English subject. It is just a relationship that will never turn out alright. If I could change anything from the class it would only be a couple things. First, I would change the length of each essay making them a couple hundred words shorter. I would find myself fishing for more things to write about and my paper would suffer for it. Second, I would implement using your quizzes more often. I believe this would help the students retain more information and actually read what was assigned. Finally, I would downgrade the number of classroom days by one. This could free up your students for a day of free time to work individually on assignments or just give them a break. I felt like in some days of class we were sitting around not knowing what to do.

All in all, I think I had a great experience for my first semester of college and you did a great job teaching. Keep on keepin on!

the end is here

Well Ms. B. we are writing our final blog post on what has been a quick and interesting sememster.  Coming in as a freshman, I did not know what to expect.  I took this same class in high school and didnt get the credit because I failed my AP exam.  In, high school, I was not the best writer but I did well enough to get a high grade.  Coming in to this class, I expected an easy A.  Since I took this in high school, I figured this would be a cakewalk of a class.  However, I was wrong.  This turned out to be the class that I had to put the most effort into.  I did my best not to procrasitant but sometimes in the end, I waited until the last minute.  Sometimes waiting until the last minute paid off.  I would get into writing grooves and write some of my best work in one night.  When I am able to do this, I am able to spend the entire week proofreading or talking to Ms. B about it.  When I talked to Ms. B about my papers, I would get my best grade.  She would break down my papers and point something out that I never saw.  Especially my first paper, I did not know what I was doing.  After my discussion with Ms. B, I completely changed my paper and wrote, in my mind, a very good paper.  And to my pleasant surprise, I received a B+ on it.  My second paper, I put a lot of work into it.  I did plenty of research and even had an appointment with the writing center, they helped my but not as much as Ms. B did.  I was never able to get an appointment with Ms. B and my grade took a hit from it.  I received a B on it, but it was about what I expected out of it.  If I had met with Ms. B I would have received a higher grade because she would have pointed stuff out that the writing center did not see.  But it was ok because I was content with my grade.  For our third assignment, Ms. B paired us off into groups and I was happy with my group.  My group worked very hard on this assignment, but we never saw Ms. B.  If we would have seen her, our paper would have possibly been much better. 
In this class, I truly became a better writer.  I learned to analyze parts of a paper that I never looked at before.  I learned about rhetoric and how to include citations in my research papers.  Ms. B tought us all this in a fun way and made sure everyone understood before she went on to the next topic.  Ms. B took a very dry subject, English, and turned it into something that I began to enjoy.  In the end, this class was not the Easy A that I thought it would be but is definately and Easy B.  I enjoyed this class very much and overall I was impressed by the way Ms. B was able to teach us something boring in a interesting way. 

First College English Class

When I anticipated what college English class would be like, I imagined that we would be reading classic novels and having philosophical discussions in class…obviously I was not right and I am very glad for that.  I enjoy the freedom English class brings to relax during class and have light discussions about the subjects at matter.  This English class was somewhat like the English classes I took in high school with respect to the atmosphere.  It was a very open atmosphere where everyone could openly share ideas, which was nice.  Also, the fact that you were interactive with the class and personal made it more of an open and comfortable forum to learn in. I think that the deadlines that we were given for each paper, such as a deadline for our outline, works cited, and rough draft, were really good ideas.  I’m a huge procrastinator so the deadlines helped me to get organized and make progress on my essays. 

Rhetoric was the main thing that I learned the most about.  I learned how images are used to convey messages and portray certain things.  I also learned to actually analyze the different aspects of an image instead of just describing it.  As much as I did not like writing 8 pages of research paper, I did like organizing my information into a way in which I was constructing a convincing argument based on facts and rhetoric.  I learned to do research that was not just from Wikipedia but from actual reliable, scholarly sources.  I do think that my writing improved with this English class.  I paid more attention to my grammar and if what I was saying actually conveyed an effective argument instead of me just talking.  I did work very hard in this class and on my papers because I know that I am not the best writer.

However, I am an engineering major so English is not exactly my favorite subject.  I love reading though so if we were to have read a bunch of novels I think I would have found that more enjoyable than writing essays.  I did not like how long the essays had to be.  I struggled each time to get the required number of words because I feel like I had already conveyed the message I wanted to get across and I was unnecessarily repeating myself trying to get the required number of words.  I know that some other English classes implemented a required number of pages instead of words which I believe that I could have constructed my essays better with.  Also, I know some other English classes had optional days where they did not have a class so that they could spend that time to work on their essay or they could meet up with the professor to discuss their essay.  I believe this may have been more productive than coming to class and just being told to work on our essay because I like doing my essays at my desk in my dorm.  Also, maybe aforementioned quizzes from the book could have been given to give more grades.

Overall, my first college English class was a positive experience and you were a great teacher!  

I'll miss the baked goods

So finally, my first English class in college has come to a close. Needless to say, Ms. Britenburg has been my favorite college English teacher by far. I mean all the rest of them fail in comparison to the great Erica Britenburg. Her transition from the elementary classroom to the college classroom was flawless. She incorporated many elementary elements such as baking baked goods for the class, which I might add should definitely be incorporated in the syllabus as a weekly event. As the actual curriculum goes, Ms. Britenburg did a great job of following the syllabus and covering every part of it. I learned a lot about rheotirc and the art of arguing a point. Getting the class to do debates got the class very involved with each other and the subject. Although our class was very unsocial there were a few who would always be the ones to speak up. I felt we could’ve improved class participation. Doing more group activites and getting to know each other better could’ve made the class experience better. I also believe that it could’ve helped us learn it a different and more effective way. I liked that the last project we did was in a group. I felt splitting up the work and getting to work with others made our argument a lot more effective. It gave us a chance to hear others ideas and contribute our ideas to theirs’.  Although a majority of us in the class will not be using the elements of this English class in our everyday life, Ms. Britenburg taught it in a way that we could apply it to our everyday life. Throught the process of our papers, she had many mini-deadlines for specific things for our paper which I believed helped the quality of the paper a lot. This way, a majority of us will not procrastinate and turn in a bad quality paper that we did the night before. I also liked that she gave us feedback on our first paper. This way I knew exactly what she wanted and I could make a more effective argument. Because she did not give us feedback on the second paper, (which was partially my fault) I felt our papers were a lot weaker. Her feedback influences the content and quality of our papers a lot. Continuing to give feedback to students’ papers will help a lot and improve  their writing skills.  She also is aware and adapts to the students’ needs. For example, she decreased the word limit of our first paper from 1500 words to 1000 words due to our class being engineer dominant. She also cancelled class the day before Fall Break in order to give us more time with our family but made us earn the day off in a creative way that applied to the curriculum. By arguing a good quality argument why we should get class cancelled we would be able to get class cancelled. This applies to the curriculum since we were studying rhetoric and the art of arguing a point. Ultimately I will take many things from the class b ut most importantly I will take away the fact that participation matters. Without participation you will not learn as effective as you would if you would participate. Overall, this was a great class and I hope Ms. Britenburg continues to make new sour patch kids and bake them baked goods as well even though they don’t deserve it because they’re never going to be nearly as cool as us.