When I think back to high school English classes there were a lot of things that didn’t work for me and those things I still struggle with and have had a hard time with in classes during my first two quarters at UC Davis. One of the things that I never felt good enough at was explaining things in a clear, concise, linear way. A lot of times in high school we were supposed to write papers to an audience that had no previous information on a topic. I found it really difficult to explain every little detail about the topic I was writing about while keeping it engaging and organized. In this class I am excited to figure out a better way to go about that but also to not have to write as if my audience knows nothing. 

 

Another thing from high school that didn’t work so well for me was the constrictive 5 paragraph formatted essay. It worked for me in terms of covering all my bases and hitting all the questions in the prompt but it didn’t really allow for my paper to flow very naturally, it caused me to really struggle with transition sentences in between paragraphs. I usually ended up abruptly switching from one point to the next and it just sounded really choppy and bad. Then, when I got to college and I had my first essay for my Women and Gender American History class, I felt very stressed about making it sound good because I had never written an essay in college before and I wasn’t sure how pretty it had to be. In the end I wasn’t really happy with the essay because of that exact issue. I am excited for this class to help me learn different formats that are more natural than the 5 paragraph essay format.