ErichMusick.com
Personal web site of Erich Musick - software engineer and Christ follower
Easing Into College
About this Page
When I first discovered that I had to take Composition at MSOE, I was relatively confident that doing well in it would be fairly easy, but I still felt a bit worried about the level of difficultly and the amount of work involved in getting a decent grade in the class. Though writing has never been very difficult for me, it has also never been one of my favorite activities. For example, in high school, though I received good grades on my compositions, I found it difficult to stretch my brain to think in the way my teachers wanted me to - my teachers always expected me to come up with an interpretation that I didn't necessarily see in the text of the literature we were discussing. Since these high school classes were considered to be college-level courses, I assumed that my college Composition class would be at least as difficult.
After my 8 o'clock class on the first day of school, I walked down the hallway to L308 and took a seat. I was excited about going to class, but still a bit unsure of what to expect. I received the syllabus. Though it appeared we would be doing less work than in previous English classes of mine, it still appeared we would be writing a fair amount - more than I wanted to.
As we got into the course, I learned that it would not be as grueling as I had expected. We were going to have plenty of time to complete the narrative essay and were given "checkpoints" - rough drafts were to be completed by a certain date before the final due date - which helped me to get my work done in a timely manner, as opposed to my bad habit of procrastinating.
I have never been good with writing narratives and composing other sorts of creative pieces. Because my high school greatly emphasized analytical writing, I graduated with the ability to write in an organized and logical fashion, but the school's weak focus on the creative aspect of narrative writing proved to make this a challenge for me. When we were first assigned the narrative piece, I struggled with finding a topic. From my perspective, I'd never had anything extraordinarily interesting happen to me, so I didn't even know where to begin finding a topic. Once I finally built off a topic suggestion with which my mom provided me and determined my specific topic, ideas came quickly and I had an easy time putting my thoughts on paper. I revised it a few times and then turned it in. As is typical for me, I approached my story from more of an analytical standpoint. Thus, the creative aspect of the paper was developed only partially - I failed to focus sufficiently on building tension in the piece. When given a chance to revise the narrative one last time, I searched for ways to build more tension. Really, all I ended up doing was adding another example or two that more clearly revealed my feelings regarding the matters contained in the story. Regardless, I learned how to improve my composition in the ways in which it needed improvement.
Persuasive writing, unlike creative writing, has always been a task that I have been able to complete without much difficultly. In addition to the several aforementioned literary analyses I wrote while in high school, my teachers constantly challenged my peers and me to take a stand on issues and write in a way that would persuade the reader to see the issue at hand from our perspective. Thus, I came to MSOE with significant experience in this regard. When it came time to write the classical argument piece, I picked my topic and without much thought, almost automatically followed the suggested sequence for this type of composition. People kept telling me that my introduction was not clear enough - it did not sufficiently provide the reader with an idea of what my stance was. Eventually, through persistence, I found a few ways to strengthen and clarify my thesis.
All things considered, this course peaked my interest more than past courses, as the topics about which we wrote were less oriented on literature. Instead, they were more practical. Despite my increased interest, I don't think I can say that this was my favorite course. I am attending MSOE, studying Software Engineering because my interests do not lie in the areas of writing and English but revolve more around math and science.
Looking back over the quarter, I have difficulty determining what I would do differently. The simplicity of this course compared to past courses helped me to ease into college this first quarter. Many of the concepts I learned in high school were reinforced in Composition. I have no regrets as far as my diligence in completing work in this course is concerned. I worked hard to edit my compositions and make them as "solid" as possible. I am prepared for what the rest of college has in store for me to do.
