Usefully Required

Required classes generally aren't something I look forward to. From lower level major requirements to GenEd the university requires, I've found there’s often a lot of wasted time. Without a doubt some are better than others but I tend to find that being forced into classes for the sake of diversity leads to a group that isn't eager to be there and a class experience that leaves much to be desired. It seems that universities are picking up the slack for a failed country wide education system. Since the general education of students isn't a sure thing just because they graduated high school, we have to pay for the university to say we’re well rounded.  That’s not to say all GenEd is bad, but when you’re sitting in a class you paid thousands of dollars for and have a professor reading off slides that most people who ever take that class will likely see, it is definitely frustrating.

So, I wasn't particularly excited for AWD.  After placing out of English freshman year, I thought I was done having to write essays and read excerpts. It didn't help that most of what I’d heard about the class from older friends ranged from “average” to “terrible.” I had decided to take the class this summer so that I could power through it not have to trudge through a full semester hating it. Given all of this, it’s surprising to say I've greatly enjoyed the class, and am in many ways disappointed that I did not take it during Fall or Spring.

Not many classes require you to think about how you’re writing, just what you’re writing. I actually think it’s really beneficial for the class to flip that on its head entirely. There’s still analysis to be done, but the majority of what I've had to think about preparing assignments is how I’m conveying what I think. Instead of spending hours reading books, collecting sources, and pulling them together to form and back up a cohesive argument, my time in this class is spent appreciating and fine tuning the nuances of how I word something. Frankly, it’s a nice change of pace. I can think of few classes where I could have ever been given a prompt and a professor could reasonably expect a draft of any kind the next day (given the obvious exception of “respond to this passage/excerpt.)

            The fact that so much in this class is transferable to real world (and real class) uses is another thing I did not expect. So many writing classes are teaching you how to take a test or teaching you how the professor likes things written in what is ultimately a game where students are trying to score as many points as possible. For this class, by and large, we pick the format of the final deliverable. This does so much to make the work done actually useful for later in life, and even if it ends up not being as relevant for some than others there is still at the very least a level of insight. While I’m not sure that even knowing what I know now I could have convinced myself not to take AWD during the summer, I’m glad to see GenEd done correctly and enthusiastically.