Fin

All in all...
I loved taking this class. Before I talk about anything I'm going to suck up for just one second. I really got a lot out of this class. I enjoyed having such a one-on-one experience because our class was so small, and I truly enjoyed working with my classmates and teacher. I think I grew as a writer throughout the course of this semester. I have always considered writing to be in my blood, and writing and reading are things I really do enjoy, so having an opportunity to show what I can do was really almost exciting. I know that this was just a general education class... But, I truly feel like I've gotten more out of this class than a lot of other classes I have taken. It has a lot to do with the teacher and the material we covered, and overall how everything was taught and assigned to us.
As far as my thoughts on how I did this semester...
In the beginning I knew I wanted to be thinking about the environment the whole semester, because that is truly something I care about and wanted to know if that was something that I could really do for the rest of my life and remain interested in it. After this class I think I have some degree of clarity, although it is not complete. I chose my topic because I knew it was something that I care about, and in all reality there are so many things that can be talked about because it is such a broad subject. I am still totally and completely happy with my topic that I chose. For my photo essay I got to showcase some awesome pictures I took, for the rhetorical analysis I got to critically think about the graphic design elements of the World Wildlife Fund (which is funny because I am actually considering graphic design, and being able to work on campaigns like the ones I critiqued would be kind of amazing), and for my research synthesis I got to talk about something that strongly effects our environment:nuclear energy. As far as goals for my research, I definitely just wanted to gain more knowledge about different topics concerning the environment. I could have absolutely done a better job, but overall I am still content with what I have learned, because I did learn a decent amount. After doing the research for my final paper, I learned that there is a lot more to nuclear energy than just the plants themselves, it has a lot to do with political and social aspects, too. I think that's extremely interesting because we, as part of the public human earth race, have an opportunity to voice our opinion about such a controversial subject. BUT, in order do that, there needs to be knowledge about the subject, otherwise opinions are based on assumptions and things that sometimes are not true. Doing the research for this final paper absolutely helped me gain a better understanding of nuclear energy. Honestly, all the research/reading we did this semester helped me gain knowledge and grow as an adult human who can and absolutely should have an opinion about different things and should be able to voice that loud and proud. I collected a decent amount of information (the amount we needed to collect) although obviously there was tons and tons more out there that I could have easily used. It was relatively easy to find once I just sat down and really gave myself to the databases. I psyched myself out (as with a lot of things) and at first thought that it would be impossible to find anything on the subject, when in all actuality there is a myriad of different publications on what I was writing about. Since nuclear energy is so broad, I feel as though maybe it would have helped if I had narrowed my paragraph topics down a bit before I started serious research. You live and you learn, and overall I am happy with the research I did because it did help me and I learned a decent amount. I learned throughout this semester, especially for the last paper, the research is HARD. I enjoy it to an extent, but man... it is hard. I can't let myself completely focus on it, I let myself get distracted or frustrated and end up being further from the end then where I started. I definitely think that the research synthesis, HANDS DOWN, was the hardest to write. Mainly because of the amount of time it took me to pin down a subject and research that. Synthesis papers I have found out are actually relatively easy to write as long as you're taking the proper amount of technique and time to do it. But, I cannot stress enough how hard research was for me, for the longest time it was this giant valley between me and being able to write my paper. Once I finally got through it though, the actual writing of that paper was just as straight forward as writing the argument synthesis. I have to without a doubt say that the photo essay was my favorite paper this semester. I had an insane amount of fun taking new pictures and searching through old pictures I had taken to display an argument about the environment and to use my photos in an essay format. I got carried away with all the fun I was having and went a little off track, but I am still happy enough with it that (along with all my other work from this semester) I decided to leave it as is and not change anything. I think that trying to organize all the projects into one cohesive unit was kind of difficult. On the one had I wanted to show my most impressive work first to showcase how far I came... but, besides my teacher and 2 classmates, nobody knows where I started. So for the organization of my portfolio, I decided to start from the bottom and move to the top. I did this so that anyone, even if they never met me, can see how far I came throughout this semester. I might me exaggerating, but I truly feel like I developed as a writer and person this semester, in this class and in general. I think it was actually kind of funny to work with such a small class on editing and revising. Usually what ended up happening was whoever was present all gathered around one computer and we edited together as a class basically. I have never been good at peer review, giving it or receiving it, give me all the edits in the world from my teacher, but for whatever reason they just mean less to me coming from a peer. I think a lot of the time it did prove helpful in our class though, because we were lucky and even though our class was small we had some really talented people in it. I appreciated their advice and it opened my eyes to the fact that peer review can actually be helpful. I learned a lot from reading their pieces. No offense to anyone in my class, but in most cases I learned what I did not want to do in my paper. Or, it made me realize how content I was with where I was at currently. There is something about reading other's work that it actually really helpful. It helped me brainstorm at times, and at other times it helped me see where my own paper needed a boost because of positive things I saw in other's work.
Again...
I cannot express how happy I am to have been a part of this class. I really enjoyed this semester in general and this class definitely factored into that enjoyment. My classmates were helpful and I enjoyed being in class with them, and I truly appreciate my teacher and his teaching methods and style. Classes are almost all about the teacher to me, they make or break it... As far as this class is concerned, the teacher definitely helped make it.
P.s. I wanted to say thanks to any of the random people of the interwebs that finds anything I do enticing. I truly enjoyed creating it, so my hope is that people can truly enjoy reading it.