5 thoughts on “Week 4 Takeaways

  1. I thought the readings this week were super interesting in the ways that they played with form and the ways in which the form of an essay informs its content– I really enjoyed the “Short Talks” assignment, and although I found it difficult to start writing, once I got the hang of it I found it to be rewarding and overall a way to synthesize a topic into a quick, almost straightforward, essay.

  2. Although it was interesting to learn about all the different ways we could modify the form of an essay, I learned I personally didn’t enjoy a lot of the readings. It helped me realize that although it’s fun to write something that’s unique formatting-wise, it’s polarizing and can detract from the overall picture if the reader doesn’t mesh well with the writing style. They might miss what you’re trying to convey in the essay.

  3. Having the one-on-one meeting with you was very helpful and changed my way of thinking in a more positive way.

  4. Although this isn’t part of the readings, I learned the importance of one’s voice in a piece and inserting themselves as a person. While workshopping the essays, I realized how many of us fail to recognize that we are also important in our own stories, yet, we remain as passive figures or bystanders. We are observers of the world and forget to insert our own opinions, expressions, and voices. It was interesting how we all had the same advice for one another but did not do it ourselves.

    I also found this week’s pieces confusing yet interesting, specifically with how the writers used ambiguous, unfinished notes as a tactic to get the reader’s attention. For me, I enjoyed “The Body” because you could tell what the piece was just by the title, but also the second meaning of it (the body of the piece was missing and had only footnotes). I was intrigued by the footnotes—they felt like scattered thoughts here and there as if a scene was flashing, then another like a progression of time but very staccato-like.

  5. I enjoyed reading all the pieces today that flipped the form of what we traditionally call an essay. Personally, they helped me to understand how the form of an essay is beneficial to the development of the essay in general and how an unorthodox approach to writing a non fiction piece can often help it.

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