Jeff Small

Steffen Guenzel
ENC1101-0001
30 November 2014
Self-Assessment: Tracing the Journey
As my time in ENC 1101 begins to end I cannot help but look back and appreciate
how far I have come as a writer this year. From the time I walked in class the first day up
until I leave after the final exam day it has been a constant whirlpool of information. I
had not taken an English class in two years so I was already pretty rusty as it was. The
small amount of information that I did remember was practically useless in the format we
were attempting to write in. When I realized we would not be writing the traditional 5
paragraph essays I panicked because that it what I had come to know. I was confident
that my writing was bound to stink and that my experience in this class would be worse
than previously expected. After overcoming my initial fears I dove in and learned more in
this class than any previous English class before it. From genres and lexis to discourse
communities there are very few things that I feel like I missed out on this semester. My
journey as a student may not be over, but the last few months have made me a stronger
writer than I have ever been before.
First and foremost this semester has brought me a new understanding of writing
processes and how they change based on context. Each paper we wrote had a different
style to the writing because they were each unique in their goal. For paper one it simply a
narrative, designed to inform the reader of my experiences with baseball. Using
chronological order I developed a timeline of events for the reader to easily trace. After

submitting the paper I came to realize how much I was still stuck in the five-paragraph
mindset. My work faltered as a result and inevitably this wound up being the starting
point on a journey towards understanding writing much better. Realizing I needed to
dramatically change the way I thought of writing led to a newfound knowledge of writing
processes. Papers two and three could not have been any more different from paper one
and yet I performed significantly better on the last two. Rather than being stubborn as
usual and sticking to my old ways I opened my eyes to what Professor Guenzel was
teaching and learned. It felt like I had been freed from the prison that high school English
teacher had built around our minds, trapping them and forcing them to work their way.
This was a rebirth of sorts in my writing, heading in the direction of being an effective
writer and away from spewing out garbage. My understanding of writing processes now
felt full, compared to how little I knew in the beginning.
When I first heard of the term rhetoric I was slightly confused. Despite hearing
the word on a hand full of occasions there was still much debate as to what it meant in
my mind. Upon discovering rhetorical analysis and its powers I felt like a phoenix reborn
from ash. Rhetorical analyses give the writer the ability to connect the text, reader, and
themselves. Rather than being an object of pleasure, rhetorical analyses view literature as
a tool for communication. This concept had been entire foreign to me before entering this
class. Free thought such as this was not promoted in high school as they attempted to
forge each of us into robots. Without ENC-1101 I am sure I would have never discovered
the idea of the rhetorical situation. Its applications in writing in different contexts such as
a narrative or memo allows for a whole new understanding of writing. Rhetorical

situation would have meant absolutely nothing to me if you said it on day one, but now I
feel as if I am an expert.
Reading has always been a very laborious exercise for me. My mind moves at a
million miles per second and I often struggle to stay in one place and focus my energy for
extended periods of time. I have always had a love/hate relationship with reading due to
its interesting content, but overall poor construction. In an age where graphics on TVs
continue to get better and movie screens get bigger, books are remaining their boring old
selves. However, what had previously seemed as interesting as watching grass grow
began to gain my interest as I learned to dissect a text. Works that previously seemed
boring and confusing slowly grew meaning and were capable of being dissected. Having
a reading assignment every night we didnt have class, while annoying, significantly
helped my ability to break down a text into its main points and goals. Responding to a
prompt every night forced me to go beyond what was on the surface of the text and truly
dig deep and learn about the true intentions of the writer. Complex texts no longer
seemed like a foreign language to me. Reading turned from being a laborious task to an
enjoyable activity all because I gained the ability to break down the text.
Finally I learned much about discourse communities and what they mean in terms
of writing. Previously unheard of, discourse communities provided the who, what, where,
when, and why of sorts. Paper two significantly expanded my understanding of discourse
communities as I was forced to learn about the club baseball team and describe it in terms
of this. Terms like lexis and genre no longer confused me, but rather allowed me to
organize the paper and extract its information. Each of these terms was intertwined
forming a web of sorts that contained all of the major points of the writing. By using

discourse communities to explain writing, I believe I became a much stronger writer and
reviser.
In closing I have learned much this year in ENC-1101. Whether it was learning
about rhetoric in the beginning of the year or how to write paper three in the end, each
task provided my English experience with a bounty of information. Coming into this
class I fully expected to dread coming each day and only do the bare minimum to
succeed. After being in my major for two years and having to backtrack to general
education courses, I was angry and discouraged. I fully planned on only doing the work I
had to do, while enjoying it about as much as a visit to the dentist. English had never
interested me before and I seriously doubted that it would now. Yet, once I developed the
skills to be a successful reader and writer this idea changed and I genuinely enjoyed
coming to class in the mornings. While responding to the nightly prompts and writing
each paper was not fun, they both played a critical part in my development as a reader
and writer. Even though I am in school to be a personal trainer, this class was extremely
important for me because it taught me information I will use for the rest of my life. Being
a fluent, well-educated writer has nothing but positive consequences. No matter where I
go or what I do, I will always be able to use the writing skills and strategies learned in
this class.