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Example 1 REFLECTION ESSAY As I sit down to reflect on my time in the English major at Berry, I’m roughly three months removed from my last English class. At the moment, I’m in the middle of a semester- long student teaching experience at Armuchee High School, finishing out my Secondary Education minor and preparing for the “real world” of teaching that awaits me after May 10th. At this point, I’ve got some well-needed temporal, as well as practical, distance between myself and the English classes that were a staple of my time at Berry. Truth be told, I miss them. On a more relevant note, I’m thankful for them. In combination with my own extensive extracurricular studies of literature – e.g. my annual summer reading and research projects with books like Ulysses , Gravity’s Rainbow , and Infinite Jest – my English studies at Berry have not only given me knowledge that I am using right now in the high school classroom but also made me an overall better, more critical reader and writer. The discussions I’ve had (or rather, given my introverted nature, mostly observed) in class have shown me how to engage with others in good intellectual discussion and how a single text can be approached and analyzed from a variety of angles. The connections I’ve made with professors, both in and out of the classroom, have shown me much the same while giving me intellectual and personal role models to look up to. In short, my experience as an English major at Berry has been an enriching one, one that has prepared me both professionally and personally for the years after graduation. Coming to Berry in the fall of 2010, I knew from the start that I was going to be an English major and Secondary Education minor. It wasn’t until the spring of 2012, though, that I
was able to start taking “real” English classes: classes that were more a part of the major than of the general education curriculum. One such class, Western Literary Tradition (ENG 337), gave me a thorough understanding of the texts that formed the basis of the literary canon, which is essential to understanding the interaction between texts that makes up Western literature as a whole. Taken at the same time, Introduction to Literary Studies (ENG 240) gave me a solid foundation in the varying critical perspectives that make up literary criticism while also exposing me to a great number of varying literary works, which has been especially helpful as I begin to choose the material I teach to my high school students. Both classes in combination with each other allowed me to enter the critical conversation myself and forced me into a deeper understanding of the works themselves by engaging with literary criticism from a variety of theoretical perspectives. One can see this explicitly in the literature review done for ENG 240 on Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”It is part of the three main essays at the beginning of this portfolio. As with most of the work done for ENG 240, this writing assignment allowed me to thoroughly examine a story that I had never encountered before. By reading numerous critical pieces, I became more aware of the vast critical conversation that can take place around even a single short story. By having to synthesize those pieces into one whole, I engaged more deeply with the story itself, judging the persuasive arguments of the literary criticism I was reading against my own personal thoughts about the story and reconciling the two through my writing. My final essay for Western Literary Tradition, written as the literature review and included in the portfolio appendix, forced me to look at a conversation separate from criticism:
longer response papers every few weeks, three of which are included in the portfolio appendix. Such response papers were nothing new for me: I did several each semester for other classes, and they were always helpful in forcing me to engage with the text on a critical level. However, the frequency of the responses required for ENG 432 made me engage with the material on a critical level almost every day , which helped me in my critical reading. It also made me write a lot , formally and informally, which strengthened my writing abilities and reinforced the engagement I was having with the material on a daily basis. This class was also the reason why I ended up presenting at the Southern Writers Southern Writing (SWSW) graduate conference several months later in July 2013. For my term paper, I wrote on the connection between Flannery O’Connor and James Joyce through their use of epiphany as a key component of their short stories. With this paper, one can see my continued reflection on the conversation between texts and writers that was so important in Western Literary Tradition from the past semester. I believe the paper speaks for itself: it was, I thought at the time, my first “major” piece of writing and, further, my first piece of writing to show some actual insight , small as it may have been. With encouragement from Dr. Watkins and some revision and editing, I submitted it to the SWSW conference. It was accepted. And so I found myself in Oxford, Mississippi – home of William Faulkner – in July. This experience was crucial for me as an actual student of literature and as a general bibliophile. Regarding the former, it was my introduction to a wider world of academia, specifically graduate studies, and showed me that it was a world I could possibly do somewhat well in. Regarding the latter, I found myself emotionally and intellectually moved throughout the time there, as we visited Faulkner’s grave, his home at Rowan Oak, and other noteworthy places like the famous Square
Books. Being in a place where some of my all-time favorite novels were written and actually standing at the literal places mentioned in them was both surreal and exciting. Our explorations and journeys out into places like the Mississippi Delta only further excited me, emotionally and intellectually, by giving me a broader idea of The South as a whole and the people that live there and by causing me to reflect on it all is reflected in the writings that make up Southern literature. 2013 in general was a good year, including my classes in both semesters. In spring, I took Dr. Dasher’s Young Adult Literature class, which exposed me to many new YA books and made me revisit those I had read already. The class also helped me start to think about the practicalities of teaching literature in a high school setting. How will I teach certain books? Will I even be able to teach certain books? How do I deal with students from a variety of backgrounds and with a variety of issues? These are basic questions, of course, but Dr. Dasher’s writing prompts and in-class discussion, in combination with the field experience I was doing at Rome High School at the time, made it all seem a lot more real at that point. In addition, my writing at that time had started to get out of hand, stylistically: it started to consist more of long, over- written, and unwieldy sentences than ones that got my point across in an understandable but thorough way. To be honest, I have struggled with that tendency for the past four years and still do. The comments I received from Dr. Dasher in YA Lit. helped me pin down some of the worst characteristics of my writing and prompted me to try to improve my writing in the areas it needed most. The essay I wrote on John Green’s work, included as part of the three main essays in the portfolio, admittedly shows some of those characteristics, although I am still proud of the critical readings done for that piece.
my ability to put those analyses into words in a clear way. All of this, including the discussions in class and Dr. Bucher’s perceptive comments, helped me produce my favorite and best work. So, that brings me, for the most part, to the present. Have I grown as a reader and writer? Yes, that is for certain. Am I prepared for the professional realities of high school teaching? Yes, that is certain as well. My English classes at Berry have made me a well-rounded student of literature and given me knowledge that I will call upon daily as a high school teacher. My professors and classes, most of which aren’t even mentioned here, have been flexible enough to adapt to my pre-existing interests while also showing me new areas and subjects to explore and become passionate about. I am not sure what the next few years hold: whether I will continue to teach high school or go on to graduate school to study literature. However, the education I have received at Berry and the personal support I have received from my English professors assures me that I will be successful, no matter which I choose. And while the former is certainly important, it’s the latter – the relationships I’ve made with the faculty here, the discussions we’ve had, and the support I’ve received – that will stick with me. My time as an English major at Berry has allowed me to hone my skills and explore my interests in a way that has always been both intellectually challenging and an immense pleasure. Thank you.
Example 2
REFLECTION ESSAY
Four years of English classes at Berry College total thirty-six credit hours. Now I am asked to compose this reflective essay to answer the question: How does “36” translate into writing development? My development as a writer has followed a natural progression. Initially, my writing always took a very safe route. I only tackled topics I comprehended fully. Through my time at Berry, I have been challenged to write about things I did not understand. Sitting down to write an assignment began to take much longer. I could not sit down with an idea and compose freely. Progressively, I would begin an assignment and draft something shallow, but the initial composition triggered thoughts that would develop after I shut my computer down for the night. Revelations would occur in the moments between sleep and awake, between rinse and repeat, between stir and heat. Some of these mind-blowing thoughts would slip away before I could jot them down; others began foundational pieces of my work. Overall, Berry’s English department has been not only a venue for me to grow and develop as a writer, but it has also been a supplier of endless food for thought and frustration, but, many times, joy. It might be relevant to explain that my first English professor at Berry was Dr. Troy Gregory in a class dedicated to the study of literature of carnival and rebellion. Half way through the semester, Gregory asked students to compose an attack on him (p.51). We were challenged to criticize as many aspects of his character as possible in a personal address. This task was difficult in the beginning, but it was not for lack of material. There is plenty to say about Gregory, but this is not the kind of writing with which I was familiar. This assignment forced me out of the safe comfortable shell I had wrote in through high school. The personal attack started the movement, but Dr. Gregory required us to continue the momentum and write about topics I had never
literature on a text in a specific field, one can begin to construct their own analysis and subsequent claim. From this assignment, I learned the time-consuming bookwork it takes to truly build a foundation of understanding behind one’s thesis and supports. As the student coming out of Dr. Gregory’s rebellious class, I was provided with the literature other researchers and writers have done before and my new wild streak called all of it into question. The authoritative voice of a published researcher no longer held 100% in my mind. In my work, I began to question others’ ideas and pose alternative ones rather than simply restating the conclusions to which they had arrived. My writing became more than it had been before – more than the safe affirmation of another’s thoughts simply with a personal eloquence added. I took chances and made statements I could not fully support, but I felt they were true. Although this portion of my writing development is not the most impressive, it was an important part of the writing I would later come to produce. I understood my theories were not well supported. However, I still yearned to write out of the safe zone. Understanding the writing process through Dr. Diller’s Principles of Writing Pedagogy gave me the permission to use writing for what I had always needed and had recently begun to do. I began to use writing to discover my own thoughts and to piece together parts of my own theories that I was initially been unable to articulate. Using writing to discover was an amazing tool. Too many times in high school I was under the impression that good ideas would come from knowledge and thought, but that they did not require writing to be sorted out. In college, professors explained this, but I was too set in my way to understand exactly what they were encouraging me to do. Finally driven to the process facing abstract ideas, I could no longer get by in writing the simple ideas that first came to me. Dr. Tenger’s assignment (p.28) to synthesize three texts from widely different times and places is a prime example of when I used writing to discover. Beginning the paper, I had no clear direction. I started with an outline that identified thin similarities and worked from there. In
assignments like this, writing became more than a way to publish and present knowledge; for me it has become a manner in which to process and gain new knowledge. In this way I find writing more useful for the individual. Often, however, writing is not meant for the liberation of an individual mind, but it is meant to be shared with others for their benefit as well. The track my mind follows when writing to discover is nowhere near what a member of the audience would need in order to follow points logically. Today, I write to discover then rewrite to present. Although my plans for the future are to be a teacher, the skill to clearly articulate personal logic in a way others can understand is extremely important. Dr. Diller’s teaching portfolio assignment (p.53) required me to consider my concept of the classroom from my students’ perspective. Not only did this help me create a document I can use in my job search, it also helped me to write to discover and clarify my own thoughts in regards to how I would conduct my classroom. Additionally, I hope to get my Masters in the Art of Teaching and my Specialists degree. The course work for these degrees will require much writing and I will be able to use the foundation Berry has given me to move forward in my career. Lastly, I plan to engage in Educational Leadership through professional organizations and professional development initiatives. I plan to read and apply research in my classroom, but I would also like to contribute to the field as well by publishing my own work. Overall, these four years have been a journey in so many ways. I have grown as a person, as a think, and also as a writer. Berry has truly inspired me to be a lifelong learner. For me, as an English major from our department, to be a lifelong learner would not be complete without the reading to encounter new information and ideas and also the writing in which to engage, muddle through, digest, and recreate everything in my own understanding.
to detail, argumentative clarity, and the effective synthesis of important issues. In rising to the expectations of these two professors, my once formulaic and vague essays became sharper and freer at the same time as my mind did. Though both these courses were outside my academic specialty, they paved the way for growth within my major by shattering mental barriers left over from high school. Releasing my old writing habits was only the beginning, however. My next lessons, learned in my first English and Rhetoric classes, involved the definitive English major skills: research and interpretation. Judging literature based upon surface-level characteristics or personal opinion was no longer considered sufficient basis for an argument, as it had been in high school. Thus, in writing my first essays within my major, I had to wend my way through the jungle of literary criticism, theoretical frameworks, and research databases and make my own judgements about what I found there. My preliminary attempts seem somewhat juvenile now; expecting to find a definitive “truth” in the library, as I then hoped, was an exercise in futility. However, my forays into research did transform my understandings of reading, writing, and learning. Rather than passively receiving knowledge, I had search for it, wrestle with it, and condense it into intelligible form. Perhaps my best production from this time period is the included literature review of critical responses to William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily”. I was confused by the story’s hints of necrophilia and social subversion and so I hoped to find its “true” meaning with the help of the critics I analyzed. But the critics had no definitive interpretation of “A Rose,” forcing me to reconcile various perspectives with my own understanding of the story. I had to trust my own judgement in the end, which was both terrifying and liberating. More to the point, this project provided an experience of fundamental aspects of literary study, an experience which enthralled me infinitely more than I expected.
After discovering the infinite possibilities of literary interpretation, my confidence and interest in literary studies developed by leaps and bounds. I realized I enjoyed scholarship for its own sake; writing about writing in this way helped clarify the world I lived in and connected me to others miles and centuries away. My discovery of feminist critical perspectives in my early years at Berry fueled this attitude. Some of my best work in my first two years of college drew heavily upon feminist thought, as feminist explanations of the world seemed close to the definitive “truth” I had always longed for. However, as my close reading skills improved and I read outside the canon of “classic” novels in my various English courses, I found my narrow focus on a universal experience of gender was far from accurate. In particular, the modernist and postmodernist works I encountered in junior year seemed too multivocal to analyze with simple binaries of male power versus female oppression. Reality, even fictional reality, could not be contained within the simplistic personal theory I’d built for myself. Again, I had to find something new, a way to embrace the variety of identities and possibilities both within and outside of literature. So I paid more attention to other elements: class, race, sexuality, and the infinite other permutations which shaped depictions of gender. I also began acknowledging the importance of genre, structure, and historical context in interpreting literary works, an understanding which enriched my analysis by taking me deeper into the works I read. I still accessed the world through literature, but that world had expanded. Close contact with professors inside and outside class particularly encouraged this expansion. Once I expressed interest in scholarship for its own sake, I found faculty willing to serve as mentors and support my evolving academic work. The most notable of these were Dr. Zeynep Tenger, who first exposed me to feminist theory; Dr. Thomas Dasher, who encouraged my reading outside the canon and advised me through numerous crises; Dr. Mark Taylor, who introduced to me to the beauties of structure and genre; and Dr. Christina Bucher, whose incisive
Looking back on these experiences leads me to consider my next steps. All the transitions and discoveries which marked my undergraduate years have taken me in a new direction career- wise. Though I originally intended to become a librarian, living the life of the mind for four years was a revelation to me. The joys and frustrations of literary scholarship gave me such fulfillment that I can’t bear the thought of leaving them behind. Thus, I’ve come to the conclusion academia is the niche for me. The way I see it, reading and writing can make a real difference by showing students the world is more complex and beautiful than everyday life would indicate. I feel teaching literature on the collegiate level will provide both a fulfilling career and way to spread my personal delight in learning to others. To that end, I have applied to eight English literature Ph.D programs and hope to start the next phase of my education in the fall. The writing, reading, and thinking skills I learned at Berry will be crucial here, as academics will literally become my life in the years to come. However, I feel much more prepared for life in general than I did four years ago. Not only have I gained new perspectives on literature and writing, I have also learned an enormous amount about myself and my capabilities. Perhaps most important of all, I have learned truth is too complex to hold within a single theory or even a single book. And in this, I suppose I have an answer to that starting question: “What is it English majors do?” We look for truth, and it is in the search itself that we find it.
Example 4 Reflection Essay I entered Berry College undecided upon a major and open to exploring opportunities in every department. During my sophomore year, I declared a biology major and creative writing minor, as I had received a creative writing scholarship that required me to major or minor in English or creative writing, yet I was interested in pursuing a degree in infectious disease epidemiology. However, I was still unhappy – I dreaded looking ahead at the difficult and frankly uninteresting physics and chemistry courses necessary for a biology major’s graduation. Thankfully, I met with Dr. Dasher and Dr. Meek not long after my declaration, and their combined effort ushered me into my first English and creative writing courses at Berry. In college, not just one door but an entire hallway opened, a coliseum of portals into other dimensions of learning crossed over and melted into one another, leading me to the realization that my interests – creative writing and the biological sciences – could not and would not be kept separate. Berry College’s liberal arts general education requirements kept me moving through disciplines. While initially torn between my first love and a “useful” major which would appease my parents, I declared both worlds as a creative writing major and biology minor. My entry into the world of creative writing was a rather rough start. This course introduced me to four major literary genres – poetry, short stories, creative nonfiction, and the ten-minute play – and outlined the basics of writing within each. The pieces I produced in each genre were image-rich but not nearly grounded enough for the reader to full comprehend exactly what was taking place. The short story, titled “The Girl in Black” and included in the attached appendix (p. 73-75), presented a surrealistic world where anthropomorphic animals interact with the protagonist, a girl, aflame, in dark clothing. Though intriguing, the plot was nonexistent and
Spring of 2015 that one of these poems was selected for the Gordon Barber Memorial poetry award. I, as a sophomore, was among several very talented senior creative writing majors awarded at the annual Honors Convocation. Dr. Donnelly’s ENG 302: Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction course proved to be a challenging course, as my prose writing had not had a chance to develop since taking ENG 250. Many of the pieces I produced missed full story arcs or seemed parts of larger stories waiting within the recesses of my mind; however, one piece stands out as exemplary of my grasp of crafting compelling dialogue. “Only Man” (p. 19-25) is a surrealistic short story in which the protagonist journeys across a desert to discover an elderly man living in the hollowed-out head of an ancient, fallen statue. The paragraphs of summary in the piece are purposefully jarring and perplexing, as the intent was to fully iterate the intensity of the environment in which the protagonist resides. Consequently, there must be some concise dialogue to balance the overwhelming description in the piece. “Only Man” demonstrates my understanding of this balance and exemplifies this concept. In the Advanced Creative Writing courses, ENG 470 and 471, I produced some of my best work yet. Dr. Meek’s advanced poetry course provided exercises and writing prompts very useful for generating ideas; however, they were less restrictive in their criteria than those in ENG 301, so I and my peers had more freedom to explore the concepts to which we were being introduced. In this course, I entered the world of quite difficult hybrid poetry. I learned to take that which I poem is saying for what it is, in the world of the poem, rather than to try and make sense of it in my own world. The poets we read experimented with found poetry, extreme condensing, and white space, and I was inspired to use these techniques in some of my own writing. My favorite poem I have written to date, “Anuyoga” (p. 26-27), was the last poem I wrote for this course. Again, I experienced the illusory “flow” so envied by countless writers,
and produced a poem requiring little revision after line breaks. This piece went on to win first prize in the 2016 Southern Literary Festival’s poetry competition and was published in the festival chapbook. ENG 470 also required students to do a response project (p.107-114) on a hybrid poet by doing a close reading of many of his or her poems, attempting to imitate his or her style, and finally using techniques learned from the poet in our own writing. I selected Rae Armantrout, of whom I was not a fan before my investigation of her work, and was schooled by the female master of condensed poetry. Her poems, often only a few lines long, pack a powerful punch in their double meanings and use of negative space. The knowledge I gained is evident in “Anuyoga”’s condensed lines and stanzas and straightforward language. These techniques are contradictory to my past poems, which often contained longer lines with much “filler” language
- my attempt at achieving the heightened language I thought poetry ought to contain. Another example piece is “Discovered,” included in the appendix on page 106, a highly-condensed and rather disturbing found poem produced from an exercise assigned by Dr. Meek. At the time of writing, I did not fully understand the message behind the words I had chosen nor the negative space used, but there was some divine feeling that the piece was completed. After analyzing the piece further in class, my peers and Dr. Meek aided me in understanding the significance of, at first, not understanding my own piece – sometimes, the muse directs and the poet simply must listen and learn. ENG 471 extended my understanding of theme, tone, and character development in short stories. Though prose is still not what I consider my strong point, I produced “On High” (p. 36- 44), of which I am extremely proud. The reader is able to experience the full arc of the relationship between the protagonist and her hippie lover, which is a difficulty I had with plot in the past. Additionally, I allowed my poetic voice to flourish once again in the paragraphs of
