Alain Mayo

In high school, I was never a huge fan of writing papers or having to right specific prompts. I didn’t enjoy classes like literature, but classes that allowed for more open writing is what I much preferred instead. Entering college, I already had passed both ENC1101 and ENC1102. I knew those two were requirements for college, and this had me satisfied with the thought of not having to write English papers again. I realized how wrong I was when I learned about ENC2135, and how that class was a new required class in college.

 

Walking into the first day of class, I maintained an open mind since I really didn’t know what the class was about. I was really excited to not see the word “composition” in the title of the class; however, I really did not understand how “research, genre, and context” can relate to each other and how they develop into a class. We were a nicely sized class of twenty-three of us including our really cool professor, Mat Wenzel. The great class size and the really cool professor made me feel comfortable each time I attended. I guess one way the class could have been better is if it was one hour later in the day, because waking up everyday at 7 a.m. became exhausting.

 

ENC2135 is a really interesting class. It is nothing like I have taken before. Mat Wenzel was an excellent instructor who taught us all well what ENC2135 was about. He changed my definition of genre and how to use it in writing within the first week of class, because initially I thought it was just a category for writing or music. The consistent blog posts that we also were assigned throughout the week kept me warmed up and gave me consistent practice throughout. I felt that it made my writing more lenient for when we had to draft our projects. The blogs were always fun for me because we it allowed for more personal writing, which is what I was more confortable with. The first project allowed for me to take a personal approach with my writing. Mat Wenzel instructed us well about project one, and how it is more than just a personal narrative. We read and reflected through our first blog post a book review that would act as an example to how our first project would look like. I learned how to tie a communities and genres. Mat Wenzel also showed us how to identify non-traditional texts and how we will benefit from their uses in our first project. All of this knowledge instilled in me allowed me to write a personal narrative about a community back home that tied to a non-traditional text. We all also attended meetings with Mat in order to talk about our progress with our projects and how we could improve it. Mat was great at giving feedback and he was always open for us to ask him questions whenever.

 

Project two was more of a challenge for me. We all had to develop a research topic where we would have to use researched information. Of course, it was more than that because we had to bring in a new community and use a text of some sort. I struggled with developing my rough draft. I did not know how I wanted to develop the two thousand word paper. Mat Wenzel gave me great feedback during my scheduled meeting with him, which was very helpful like the first project. On top of that, I caught a pretty bad illness that actually miss class and it made my life in college a struggle. A lot of stress developed as deadlines began to become closer and closer. I also had an IFS class on the side to take care of, and that class was also research and writing orientated. I had a lot to deal with on my plate, but it just got worse. I had issues with my laptop that made my writing tasks even harder to perform. I finally was able to develop my second project before t became too late.

 

Project three was by far my most favorite. It was not necessarily writing orientated like the previous two. I felt freer on how I wanted to create it. Mat Wenzel gave us examples on genres to use for our mulitgenre project and through multiple lectures, I felt very comfortable on how to develop it. I made a virtual minecraft map that I published on the FSU subreddit. As I write this, that post I made is still trending on the front page of that subreddit. I really enjoyed creating it and presenting it to my classmates.

 

I know that I will be writing for essays and creating more projects many times throughout my college career. I must say, that ENC2135 gave me a great perspective on college level writing that I will be using in the future. I want to thank all my great classmates and the fantastic Mat Wenzel for instructing this class beautifully.