Before I took ENC2135, a lot of the writing I had done were for a majority, lab reports. So you can imagine my great surprise when we were asked to write a personal narrative within our first few weeks into the semester. Looking back, I definitely should have asked a lot more questions concerning project 1 because even by the time of my first conference, I still remember fumbling around while reading my essay out loud. Least to say, the direction was a mess. The paper accurately reflected how I felt about the assignment, stiff and very impersonal, not at all close to what we were supposed to achieve with the prompt in the slightest. But I received a learning experience out of it. The matter of fact was that I still needed to learn how to grow comfortable in my writing from a more at ease and look-at-the-bigger picture standpoint, rather than focusing on the technical details all the time. A great mixture of the two was the goal, I came to realize. Growing comfortable in my writing also meant that I had to grow comfortable with talking about myself.
Now, this detail is crucial to undertaking Project 2. But, as I listened to everyone talk about their communities, I slowly started to feel more and more small, because frankly, I was more concerned with completing school assignments instead of doing extracurriculars in high school. Which now lead me to this problem of not being able to identify any standout factors about myself that I can finally link to a community here at FSU. Although not as frequent now as it was back then in my youth, I suddenly remembered that I like K-pop. To be honest, going into Hallyu Wave, I had my reservations because I never interacted with anyone that understood K-pop for what it was rather than the stigma that comes with being a part of the fanbase. But I was relieved to find such genuine people through the club. And as proof, my writing really did come through at my second conference with Mat. The club was such a great experience, I nearly had nothing negative to say about it in my paper. All in all, Project 2 was by far my favorite assignment to carry out in spite of my stressful start, This was only because I had once again became hyper-fixated on the smallest of details such as the qualifications for a functional text or what would be considered a sub-genre. I was honestly so focused on addressing these points that I completely neglected answering the prompt. It was only when I shifted my attention to being present in the moment at the club and became an active member, that my writing for the second paper came to me relatively easy. It took me a long time to understand that I can examine how the club functions with its texts by reflecting on its lasting influence and its added significance to my life in the end.
The genres were what allowed to create my own wave of influence into the real world. It was actually fun being able to take what I had done with my working portfolio and replicate it into real platforms for others’ viewing. For instance, my Amino blogpost about the benefits of being in a K-pop recreational club was able to reach 28 likes and a personal comment from a user stating that she was going to make her own K-pop club because she was looking for a positive experience sharing it with other people too. With that, I can at least say that my genres in Project 3 reached their intended purpose.
Hopefully, what I can take from all of this is that I do not always need to uphold to the academic way of writing. Instead, if I learn how to look at the bigger picture of things and greater outcomes, it can benefit me by allowing my words come off as more sincere and personal to my readers. In effect, touching them and maybe even incite my readers to start a movement of their own. Lastly, one of the most memorable things I took away from the conference, was how Mat stated that my writing almost resembles a journalist’s work. To me, I always enjoyed reading articles that journalists had written previously. If a lab report was meant to inform, I thought a journalist’s writing achieved the same effect but what differed for me was that their writing embodied so much life and was always fun to read. Being in ENC2135 this semester, I was able to really understand the hows and whys of that effect. That said, I cannot wait to see how my writing evolves after having taken this course.
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