Becoming a Stronger Writer
This semester has been interesting to go through compared to my first one, as they’ve both been wildly different yet also have notable similarities. I definitely enjoyed this class a lot, once again my writing/english class was generally the most enjoyable class of the semester. I believe I’ve become a much better student compared to my first semester. Admittedly, personal issues in my life definitely impacted my abilities as a student for the worse, which was a notable difference. However, I came in with far more experience and understanding on what I could do. And even in spite of those issues, I still firmly believe that I’ve improved throughout the year throughout this time as well, My topics tend to be less orthodox compared to other students’, but as we go through my literary journey this semester I’ll be mainly focused on how I achieved several of the Course Learning Objectives (CLOs).
Our first paper was the op-ed, in which I wrote about Super Smash Bros. and Nintendo’s lack of support towards it, especially in comparison to other fighting games. The first and second CLOs are related, so I will discuss them together. They both entail that I “[e]xamine how attitudes towards linguistic standards and differences empower and oppress language users,” with the second one requiring that I also “acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility.” I believe that in the case of my op-ed, Nintendo often uses their commercial jargon or “corporate speak” to oppress their players especially in the cases of their tournament cancellations. The way they used that style of speech when they canceled the Smash World tour was clearly done in an attempt to minimize predicted negative reception and was an important part of displaying Nintendo’s maliciousness towards Smash. As I talked about in my essay, “Doing this on such a short notice is needlessly unfair and proves Nintendo’s total lack of care for the community, wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars for VGBootCamp and the community as a whole.”
Momentarily skipping over a few CLOs for now, the next one I want to focus on is my ability to “develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.” Throughout the year in general, there was definitely a focus on working together as writers in the classroom. More recently, we were able to talk about one of our papers via our Oral Reports, where people could ask questions about what you wrote or similarly make comments about it. Additionally in general for pretty much every paper I wrote for this class, I had a considerable amount of help from my friends when writing it. I asked multiple people to review them, for example. Even in my op-ed, I included one of my friends’ statements as evidence for the paper. Collaboration was an important part of my writing process this semester, helping me avoid mistakes I overlooked a lot of times. For example, I almost included misinformation in my research paper, but I was able to correct it thanks to a friend noticing it whilst reading it.
Speaking of my research paper, there were some CLOs that I was able to complete as well. As I had to “formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing,” During the initial creation of my introductory paragraph, I had to make my stance very clear as to drive in the point of Nintendo’s maliciousness. Specifically I had stated, “I plan to break down and explain why a majority of these new guidelines are anti-competitive and arguably malicious to the community, along with displaying how Nintendo in general acts maliciously to the Smash community often trying to weaken the competitive scene however they can.” Here it’s clear that I take a stance, being that Nintendo has always been notoriously malicious to the Smash community, specifically but not just including the case of the new tournament guidelines. The two CLOs directly after that one, “practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects” and having to “strengthen your source use practices ” were both also clearly done in my research paper. I used properly cited evidence continuously throughout the essay. As an example, when I spoke about how Smash players make very little money relative to other top players of even just other fighting games, I brought up the prize pools of the tournaments and an article elaborating that the players, tournament organizers, commentators, and pretty much everyone in the scene would like more money, at least money comparable to other popular competitive games.
All-in-all, even in spite of the difficult circumstances I had to deal with during this semester outside of school, I believe I’ve grown as a writer once more. I think I’ve done a much better job especially in comparison to my first semester overall in terms of writing quality. Additionally, I’ve met the various Course Learning Objectives throughout the semester through the essays we had to work on. While of course I would’ve liked things to go better, I’d argue my struggles’ impact on my writing was definitely balanced out or arguably nullified by my sheer improvement over the course of the year.
