“My Journey through English 111,” Adrianne Grebenkin” (2015) — Inquiry 5

For a fully-formatted version of Grebenkin’s text go here: Grebenkin-formatted

Writer’s Reflection:

 

The only major difficulty I faced when approaching my Inquiry 5 assignment was trying to devise an idea for my text collage. I wanted it to epitomize my various writing experiences throughout the semester in such a way that it showcased both the weak points of my writing, including certain writing skills I did not know how to execute, as well as the accomplishments i’ve made in my writing over the past few months. I also wanted to express some of my opinions on writing that I’ve shared through response posts throughout the semester to ultimately give the reader a sense of my personal outlook on writing as a whole. I overcame my writer’s block for my text collage by going back over every single one of my WordPress responses from this semester and from that point I formulated an idea of showcasing what I discussed above through my text collage.

With this assignment I liked the fact that we were able to take the reigns and essentially choose our own route to take in relation to what we wanted to include in our collages. It was also enjoyable to be able to format the collage in any way we pleased. It was nice to gain this kind of writing freedom after having completed four previous inquiries which all had certain strict writing guidelines to follow.

Finally, in terms of my writing process, I would have to say that it changed with this inquiry in the sense that I really just went for it head on. It didn’t take nearly as much time to plan the structure of my assignment as it did with the other previous inquiries, therefore the process of writing was a lot less time consuming and additionally was quite relaxed. All in all I hope that this different writing process was able to translate onto the page in a way that my creativity in formatting was hopefully able to shine through to the reader.

 

Reflection

First and foremost I intended for my my Inquiry 5 text collage to be easily read and understood by the reader. However, above all, I hoped for the reader of my collage to be able to connect and engage with the writing piece in such a way that they truly understand the concept that I chose to take on in my assignment. The prompt seemed pretty broad to me in the sense that, in contrast to our four previous inquiries, we were given the freedom to be creative with the  formatting and go a number of different routes with the assignment. After evaluating the various different options I had, I ultimately decided that I wanted to showcase, through the means of my text collage, my personal transition throughout English 111 this semester, from a mediocre non-confident writer to a more knowledgable student with improved writing skills. In choosing this theme, I essentially was able to focus in on the pieces of writing I produced throughout the semester, the majority of which were blog response posts, that expressed my numerous thoughts and queries regarding english writing as a whole as well as certain writers letters and inquiries we completed over the course of the past couple months. I also chose to include various comments on my writing processes throughout the collage in order to give the reader a good idea of what kind of writer I was pre and currently am post english 111.

I attempted to the best of my ability to make as many connections as I possibly could between the various sentences and phrases that I included within my text collage that were derived mostly from response posts, but also writers letters and the actual inquiries themselves. I did this by organizing the individual lines of texts in such a way that each sentence strongly, and in some cases loosely, corresponded to the one that came before and after it. It is in this way that I hope the reader of my assignment is able to interpret my collage as if they are being guided through it. Additionally, it is my intent that the reader to be able to identify that purpose and reason behind every sentence and phrase I included in my collage through this organization method I chose to take on.

In relation to the formatting of my collage, after brainstorming various different design methods I could make use of, I chose to go with a simple design in order for the audience to be able to really focus in on the text I chose to include within my collage instead of perhaps being distracted by an over-use of formatting elements. I ultimately decided on arranging my text in an almost story book-like manner in the sense that every line of text is simply compiled one after the other, without using bullet points or numbering. However, I did choose to make use of varied fonts for each line of text I included. I thought that this would ultimately present the viewer with something fun and creative that they would hopefully feel excited to read. Additionally, I personally feel as if formatting the text in different fonts gave the assignment more a a collage-feel in comparison to just using one font to format the entire inquiry in. Furthermore I chose to play around with size and color with each of my lines of text with the purpose of grabbing the readers attention and sparking their interest in reading my collage. I also believe that by making use of different font sizing and coloring (though staying within a color range of purple), that the reader could also gain a sense of the personal style, mood and creativity of my piece. I especially planned on only making use of one color range in my collage as I thought using, for example, a variety of rainbow colors would be too loud and would detract the reader from understanding and interpreting my collage fully.

All in all, it is my intent for the audience of my collage to take away with them a good sense of what my personal writing experience through english 111 has been like. From my initial nerves and anticipation to embark on this semesters various writing assignments to posing various questions in order to ultimately better my writing capabilities, I have undoubtedly created a collage that sums up my growth as a writer as well as my personal and undeniably enjoyable, english writing experience throughout this semester.