Paul Livgren

Mr. Larry Neuburger

Comp 102

May 18, 2011

End of class Examination

I usually have a bleak attitude toward English classes. This might be due to me being

pessimist, but I think it’s because I’ve never been in an English class I’ve particularly enjoyed.

I’m not going to be sitting at home this summer writing research papers for fun; nevertheless this

class has made writing much more enjoyable for me.

What I previously disliked about English was the amount of time it took to produce good,

high-quality work. This class affirmed that, but the subjects and projects we worked on were

interesting enough that I could feel proud of what I had accomplished after eight hours of work,

instead of feeling like I wasted my weekend. And the uses of the blogs were helpful in gathering

up all of what we had worked on and presenting in to the world. I doubt many people would be

interested in looking at my work; nevertheless it gives me a mood of success seeing the

accumulation of everything I’ve worked on.

What I learned about my own writing is that I shouldn’t be ashamed of it, especially

when I put so much time into it. One of the most challenging things at the beginning of the class

was being told my Mr. Neuburger that everyone would be able to view my writing through the

blogs. I was not looking forward to this, mostly because I consider myself a crummy writer.
After a while this didn’t really become an issue. I concluded that were all here to get better, so

there is nothing to be embarrassed about.

Perhaps the largest change over the course of the semester was my feelings towards

academic writing. Ever since high school my disgust of research papers has been agonizingly

apparent. I would have nightmares and hallucinations from the past experience boredom of

writing them. However, in this class they seemed much milder, and the opportunity to work on

them in class and receive help seemed to soften the blow. Also, the fascinating subjects we wrote

about made it much more easygoing.

I learned more about the Holocaust from this class than any history class I’ve ever been

in. Enjoying the subjects you write about is truly important when it comes to writing. When

asked to write a fourteen page paper I normally would have rolled up in a ball and cried until

they took me somewhere with padded walls. However my lack of knowledge concerning the

holocaust motivated me to do proper research for my paper. Normally I would have been upset

that we didn’t to choose the subject, but the second research paper gave a little more freedom in

choosing subjects which I liked.

Throughout the course of the semester Mr. Neuburger put a lot of emphasis on the use of

technology. Using the technology has impacted the learning in a positive way. The things we

learned are things that I had never seen before, and had extremely limited knowledge about.

Most of the time you’re in an English class you build on what you already know and it becomes

monotonous, but using technology brought a fresh spirit to learning English.

 If any of the things I now know had been mentioned at the begging of the semester I

would have been extremely confused. But looking back at the accumulation of everything that I

have leaned it becomes clear how the involvement of technology had a major impact. Tools

Like Sribd, audio converters, audacity, and movie making software were entirely foreign to me.

The best part of learning them was having someone knowledgeable about them helping me on

the way. After learning about them I feel more equipped for any class I may take in the future,

even if it’s not an English class. In an increasingly technological world putting emphasis on these

things is greatly important.

I’m not sure much could have been done to enhance my learning experience this

semester. I tried my hardest and the things I learned won’t be leaving my head anytime soon. If I

had it to do over I would have preferred a Tuesday/Thursday class for this type of thing. Coming

in here and working on a really long project for fifty minutes flew by too fast to get much done.

This is only a minor complaint since it is out of the ordinary to be able to work on things in class

at all.

Overall being in this class was a wonderful experience that I wouldn’t ever take back. I

learned a lot of really hard things and perhaps the most difficult aspect was remembering how to

spell Neuburger correctly on all of my papers.