Karyssa Adame- Final

Karyssa Adame
Mr. Neuburger
Comp 102
December 14, 2011

When first coming into this English class, I was a little apprehensive. When I thought of taking an English class I thought it was going to be the kind of class that has paper after paper assigned and I just knew it was going to be a big load. Most people who take any English class at a college level know how difficult it can be. To my surprise when I walked in on the first day of class, there was a laid back, funny teacher who reassured me that this semester wouldn’t be hell. We had our rubric for the semester and pretty much stuck to it well. When most teachers give a deadline they take no exceptions if it isn’t done on time. No matter how hard the assignment was or how tedious they do not take late work. Again, that wasn’t the case. I know that personally I turned in at least one assignment a day or two late and you understood. You always offered me and my other classmates help if we needed it and answered any questions we might have had. I wouldn’t say that this class was easy because it wasn’t at all. You had good assignments that made me do research and use my brain and skills a little. Yet, you didn’t make my college life stressful! Thank you.
I did enjoy the blog aspect of this class. It was something sort of new to me but I had never thought of using it in a educational way. When we had assignments due, it was nice to be able to log on there and see which direction my classmates were taking and how their progress was. It is a genius way to keep all of our work together and easy for you to see what we have done throughout the semester. When you first said that we would be using Twitter in this class, I have to say I wasn’t thrilled only because I was not that familiar with it but, once we started using it more I did take a liking toward it. Again, I have never heard of a English class using twitter as a educational tool but I feel it worked to a certain extent. I was happy to use it as long as we didn’t spend to much time on it because then I felt like I lost my focus and felt myself using the internet for other things besides twitter. I thank you for assigning one major research paper this semester instead of small ones every week or so. I felt like this gave us more time and energy to throw ourselves into. The setup of the holocaust research paper isn’t one I really cared for. I didn’t like the idea of having so many sub headings/subjects within my paper. I think that is what threw me off a little when writing and constructing it. I have never written a paper in that format and it was definitely a learning experience. I like the amount of time you gave us for the paper though, it definitely took off the pressure a little bit.
When it comes to the digital story, I thought it was a good idea but I felt like we just didn’t have enough time for it and to really make it our own. I know you gave us a small assignment for thanksgiving break but maybe if we had started it the week before the quality of them would have been much better and given us more time to gather pictures, info ect.
Overall, I really enjoyed this English class and your teaching techniques. They were different from comp courses I have taken but, I learned a lot in this class and have knowledge now that I didn’t have before. Thank you for making this semester not stressful like you could have as an English instructor but yet fun. I would recommend peers to you if ever need to take an English course!