Dear Marlen,
At the start of the semester you had each one of us decide what our goals were that we wanted to reach by the end of class. I had said that I wanted to be a “better writer.” When we had our first conference you had me expand my goal more and asked me what it was in my opinion to be a better writer. I ended up expanding it to saying how I want to work on my flow with paragraphs and my sentence structures. Well now that this semester has come to an end, I definitely think that I have accomplished my goal in this class. My mom even commented on the improvement in my writing which made me feel good. I had her read all of my essays and she was amazed how much I progressed as a writer from the very first essay I wrote, to my final autoethnography.
Writing my autoethnography is one thing that really surprised me this semester. When you told our class how we would be writing a ten page paper, I was dreading it. I never thought I would be able to find enough information to reach ten pages. However, when it came the time to actually sit down and write it, it all just came so naturally and I had no difficulty writing my autoethnography. What was even more shocking for me, was that I actually enjoyed writing this paper. It was neat to see how everything all tied together in the end. I felt as if my autoethnography was a final reflection of the characteristics I have learned about myself throughout this semester.
Writing this final reflective letter has really made me realize how much I have learned over this semester. In all of my other class I learn and remember things, however, I end up forgetting it down the road. In this class though, I know I have took something from it that I will not forget. This is because it is a part of me and I will have it forever. My writing skills that I have learned will only continue improving from this point on and I have you to thank for that.
I also really liked how you brought our class closer together. At the start of the semester, I went into that class only knowing one familiar face because I had went to high school with them. However, throughout the semester with the activities you have made us do together, I have connected with quite a few people. In the other classes that I have, I could not even tell you the names of my classmates. This is because my professors do not take the time to let us socialize with each other and learn things about one another. On the other hand, in our class I am honestly able to say that I know every person’s name. I could even tell you a little about each person by getting to know them in class this semester. So thank you again for helping me achieve my goal of finding my voice as a writer and also for making a connection with some awesome people.
Sincerely,
Dani
