Zeenat Qanoongo

Writing for the Arts and Humanities

Spring 2022

Prof Brener

  Self Reflection Essay

Throughout this course of writing for the humanities and arts, there were many things I was hoping to learn and improve on throughout the semester. On my part, I did slack in this class and it was my mistake of taking such an early morning class, so as a result I was not there for most of the time, and I doubt I actually achieved the majority of the course objectives. I do think I slightly improved as a writer in terms of forming my own opinions and finding a good amount of evidence to support it. For example, the op-ed that we had to write. I was first going to start with cultural appropriation, which I thought would be a good idea. As I started to listen to my classmates and their topics, I realized I should choose a topic that would relate to me more, that it would be something I could write about. 

I ended up choosing to write about women in desi culture, as I am a woman of desi culture. The op-ed was a lot easier to write in terms of experience. I also got a lot of evidence in terms of articles and books and it helped a lot with my op-ed. I was able to use that evidence to strongly support my topic. Out of the 4 major assignments of our course i think the Op-ed and the grant proposal were two things I focused on a lot. I think it was also because I knew I had slacked throughout the majority of the course and that I would have to get up my grade somehow. Although this semester was hard for me besides the work, I don’t think I should have slacked the way I did. I also happened to make my portfolio in a rush and I didn’t focus on design or how to make it look presentable. For me it was the end of getting my work in no matter what. 

I think this course could have gone a lot different for me if I had put the effort into it and managed to prioritize my time. As I stated in the beginning, I don’t think I achieved the majority of the goals in this class. I do think I did well on my Op-ed, it was my best piece this semester. While I didn’t do so well on other things I think my grant proposal with my partner was another good piece this semester. I did not grow or improve the way i wanted to and should’ve but i’m going to take this as a lesson and work harder in the future.