Self Assesment Essay

My Growth in Writing

“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” – Benjamin Franklin. Over the last four months, this class, Composition for Creative Expression, has helped me improve in so many academic areas. Not only writing and reading, but comprehension, discussion, sourcing, and so much more. I feel as if I have really learned a lot throughout this semester, especially in this class. Looking at our first paper, the Personal Narrative, and our last paper, the Research Essay, there is clear growth and development in the quality of my writing. With the intention of focusing on the course learning objectives and really putting a lot of effort into my assignments, I have achieved great advancement and plan to use these new skills and techniques in all of my future writing.

Starting with our first big assignment of the semester, the Personal Narrative essay and presentation, this was a good start to the school year and taught me so much I was missing. One of the course objectives I really fleshed out while writing this essay was “Articulate how meaning is created in the arts or communications and how experience is interpreted and conveyed. (4)” In my personal narrative, I talked about how seeing a performance of the opera Romeo and Juliet changed my life. As I stated in that essay, “Reading this play and many others at the time really changed my ways of thinking, reading, writing, analyzing, and just overall consumption of literature. The experience taught me so much, and eventually going and seeing the opera was life changing.” Writing about my past experiences reminded me how much art has had an impact on my life, and the message of different pieces really affects me. Another course learning objective that goes along with this is “Analyze how arts from diverse cultures of the past serve as a foundation for those of the present, as well as describe the significance of works of art in the societies that created them. (6)” The opera I saw was in Italian, so seeing how the story of Romeo and Juliet was portrayed through Italian thought and language was very interesting. Romeo and Juliet has been done in a million different ways for hundreds of years, proving art from the past can still be present today. I will definitely use what I have learned from these course objectives about art and culture in my future. Since I am a theater major and very interested in the arts, this new intelligence I have come across will unquestionably come in handy.

I think most of my improvement came with writing the Research Essay along with the Annotated Bibliography essay. While writing these papers I could see the growth happening right before my eyes. I focused on many course learning objectives during my writing such as, “Gather, interpret, and assess information from a variety of sources and points of view. (1) Evaluate evidence and arguments critically or analytically. (2)  Also, Produce well-reasoned written or oral arguments using evidence to support conclusions. (3)” All three of these objectives really became clear to me while working on the Research Essay and I feel as if I have improved greatly in these areas. As stated in my Annotated Bibliography essay, “As I went through more and more sources, it became a lot easier to analyze them to figure out if they were reliable or not.” Another course learning object that really stood out to me was “Identify and apply the fundamental concepts and methods of a discipline or interdisciplinary field exploring creative expression, including, but not limited to, arts, communications, creative writing, media arts, music, and theater. (5)” Since our essays were focusing on a Broadway musical, it forced us to look into the industry and fundamentals of many, many shows. This new information I gathered taught me so much about the field and how to understand the research I was doing. I am sure I will be writing many more research papers and annotated bibliographies in the future, so these course learning objectives that I now understand will definitely help me with those said writings. 

Other works I really enjoyed this semester were the discussion board posts that linked up with what we were learning about in our topic class. Specifically, I enjoyed Discussion Board #7, relating to the musical Wicked. Since this is the final discussion board, you can really see my growth since the first discussion regarding an article that was about “EF’s Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play” by Elinor Fuchs. A quote from Discussion Board #7 that shows my growth is “Personally, I love Wicked and have seen it on Broadway twice before. This article broadened my knowledge about the show and all the symbolism it intertwines.” (Maurer 1) I feel as if doing each discussion board post really strengthened my ability to comprehend what I had just read/watched along with my communication skills with my fellow classmates. Reading so many posts and articles, I feel as if a learning outcome that I strengthened during my discussion boards is “Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations.” We were analyzing so many new pieces of work I had not seen before and it really broadened my knowledge.

I plan to utilize what I learned this semester in all of my future writing. With my new skills in sourcing, writing, discussion, understanding information/research and so much more, I feel as if I can succeed in future writing classes. Especially since I am a theater major, this class has really helped me to learn more about theater and the arts in general. The learning objectives that focused on the arts are the ones I really enjoyed diving into. I can reference all of the handouts and lessons from this course when dealing with future classes. I am very thankful for all the help Professor Matias gave us. I will use all the new techniques and skills I have learned in Composition for Creative Expression to succeed in my future endeavors!