As I was searching for an English class to fulfill my liberal arts requirements, I stumbled upon ENC 1145, a writing course with a variety of different topics to choose from. From the Hunger Games to poetry, there was a topic for everyone and I tried to find one that I really liked. After narrowing down my choices to the classes that fit into my schedule, I found this class. It was entitled Writing about Public Service and Community Action. I immediately knew this class was right for me since I had always been very involved in my other communities. Additionally, I was new to Tallahassee and I figured volunteering around the city would allow me to get to know it better.
As the semester went on, we were assigned to a specific organization to volunteer with. I was very excited to work with Big Bend Cares since they help those affected by HIV and AIDS and I plan to pursue a career in the health care industry. Before I began volunteering at BBC, I thought I would be interacting with actual HIV/AIDS patients. However, just before we began volunteering, the volunteer coordinator at Big Bend Cares changed and the new one ran things differently. To my disappointment, when I began volunteering at BBC, I was given boring and mundane tasks like stuffing envelopes and calling people. My fellow classmate who was also volunteering there stated having a similar experience to mine. Although I was a little disappointed, many of my other classmates reported having fun and learning a lot with their time at their organizations.
Aside from the outside experience, the writing in the classroom was also a huge component of the class. I fell that my writing has definitely improved throughout the semester. I hope to take the things I learned in this class and apply them to any future courses. What was different about this writing class was that we learned how to write for the real world. I feel like in past compositions courses I have written mostly boring research papers that no one wants to read. In this class, however, I fell that that writing we did can actually be used by the organizations we partnered with in real life.
In fact, my favorite project was the Media Campaign. During this project, we had to create three media artifacts to enforce our purpose to our specific audience. For example, I was trying to spread awareness about HIV and AIDS to college students and so I created a poster, brochure and T-Shirt. Even though I am not the most creative person, I enjoyed creating these artifacts using different programs.
Additionally, I really like the final project in which we put together the different media campaigns for the students who volunteered at the same organization. Using the Wix program, which I had never used before, my partner and I created a website to display our campaigns. I actually had a lot of fun creating this website. Although I am not very creative, I enjoyed putting together out final campaigns on display. I think our website looks very professional and I am proud of how it came out.
As a suggestion, this class may be run so that every student volunteers at the same organization. Since there were so many different experiences with different organizations in my class, it may be helpful to have the entire class volunteer with the same organization. In my class, many students had vastly different experiences which lead to different problems while writing. This made it more difficult to have discussions in class. It was also harder to have workshops and peer reviews. It may be easier to just have all the students volunteer with the same organization so that everyone’s writings revolve around the same general topic.
All in all, this class has taught me many things. From new writing styles to using new programs, I have learned to adapt my own habits in new ways. Even though this is my last English class I will be taking in college, I have no doubt that I will still be writing many papers in my college career. I hope to be able to use what I have learned in this course not only in other courses, but also in life.