Reflection

    Reflecting on something while you are still in the midst of it is a difficult region to explore. It is hard to reflect while there are still unknown elements that could affect your reflection, positively or negatively. 

     When I registered for this class, I was indifferent at the time. I had been registered for another class that was unexplainably canceled and was forced to find a new class to register for quickly. I’m going into my last year at Northeastern and have an already rather specialized major so finding the courses to fit my class requirements can be a challenge. I did no prior research of the class or the teacher before registering, just selected a time that allowed flexibility for my work schedule.

     Writing is something that has always interested me and something that I had always been very much aware of. I have always been really intrigued by word choice, linguistics, syntax and the etymology of words. It always infuriated me when people misused words or placed a comma inappropriately. Having this past experience with writing, I was excited to begin this class. I thought it would be a simple writing course like the many I had taken before.

     However, it was very different from what I expected. Everything was much more discipline specific. Coming from a small and narrow discipline, in which a majority of my writing takes place in a different language with different writing rules, discipline specific writing has always been a challenge for me. I had also just finished my co-op, in which I spent everyday writing.  However, everything I had been writing in co-op was not applicable to the assignments. It was difficult to see the connection between my discipline and the assignments.

      It was during the last assignment, writing in the workplace, that I recognized the best way for me to succeed in this class. My discipline has a very different set of rules, as does everyone’s. I needed to remove myself and create a third-wall with my discipline and approach my work as an anthropological or a linguistic study. By removing myself as the author and simply creating a piece of work, analyzing and understanding the intention and purpose of the work becomes much easier. I was blocking myself from succeeding because I wasn’t able to see the connection, until I created one.

       I think one of the things that I have taken away and appreciate the most from this class is a new analytical approach to things. It has made my writing process for this class more standard and habitual. I never really have to write lab reports or project testing reports; all of my writing for my classes are relaxed and explaining my thoughts on a topic. It has been very interesting to see what other people have to write for their disciplines and how their jargon and paragraph structures vary. It is clear that the writing process varies greatly from discipline to discipline and it has been nice to have this class to demonstrate that to me. It has created a larger appreciation and understanding for the different role that writing has in everyone’s disciplines.