If life gives you lemons

Comments about Peers and Me

Katie B. has kept her voice similar throughout the course. I noticed that her vocabulary and sentence structure didn’t change much. But, she becomes more “real” at the end of the semester than the beginning. Her word choice and sentence structure is a bit stand offish. I feel like she keeps her distance a bit from her audience. Towards the end of the semester she reveals more about herself and allows more feeling to enter, but even still, she hides herself a bit. Her voice though ,is real. I can easily discern her writing from another’s.

Meagan I noticed is more rigid in her earlier drafts and then she softens it up. The transitions in her earlier works do not work as well. This creates a bit of a choppy structure. But as she works her drafts she softens this up. The transistions work much smother and it feels more like you’re riding a river and not looking at a brick building. From her first essay first draft to her third essay first draft there is a big difference in her choppiness. She is becoming more able to create the fluid structure on her first try and not need revisions to help her see it.

Audra D. is different than Katie B. to me in that Audra seems to put herself into her pieces a lot. I see a total investment in her voice. She doesn’t reveal only parts of her life, she reveals all. This is great for creative non-fiction, however Katie has an advantage. Because her voice is more disconnected she has more authority. It is more evident in the first piece. Because Audra is very personal it is harder to be swayed by the logic of her argument while Katie is more disconnected so the reader assumes that she has thought about things and is not giving a rash opinion.

Caitlin F., I like her. I noticed that in her final essay she changed the transition where she talks about how she isn’t a writer in the first draft to the second, but then changes it back. I don’t see this really when a student decides that a previous transition is better than a new one. This shows that she knows what she likes and isn’t afraid to do it. I’m sure she changed this transition due to comments made by other classmates but then changed it back. I find that her voice was different from her first essay and her third essay. The first essay she is more formal more authoritative and in the third she is more vulnerable. But what impresses me is that it is a natural read. I don’t feel like Caitlin is straining to use a different voice, she is able to switch easily.

Steven P. All I can say about him is that he is a pure genius. The paragon of writing and a wonder to all (sigh, if only that were true). I noticed that this semester I took time to got out of the box. I was tired of being told by professor the exact format and content for essays. I was tired of fitting what I wanted to do to what the professor wanted. So since, Dr. A, you gave me an inch, I took a mile. I would like to thank you for allowing me this. I feel that I was able to be consitintly creative with the assignments. I don’t think that my creativity weakened or my voice. I improved upon my transitions throughout the semester and I noticed that my grammar became better. But I think most of all, I was able to be shown what an essay may become. Before I figured the five paragraph essay was it: intro, body, and conclusion. But I learned that there is so much more and that the world of writing isn’t just that. I wanted to learn what I could do with essays and I learned a lot. This was in thanks to you Dr. A. Thank you for not forcing me to write a certain way. Thank you for allowing me to explore options. And thank you for giving me pointers of sweet techniques I could use to enhance my argument. I think that this was the biggest way I impoved. It wasn’t my voice, grammar, organization, or transitions. It was how I view the possibilities of writing. For that I am truly grateful (if you feel like my praise was sarcastic, it was not meant to be because I have been a sheltered writer and seeing what is out there really does me good).