Name of Assignment: Poetry Submission #2 Subject: Creative Writing Facilitator/Teacher: Paul Wood
In my college creative writing class, I get an assignment twice a week that I have to write a draft for and at the end of the unit, Mr. Wood picks four of those drafts for us to revise and put into a document to submit for grading. For our informal poetry unit, I had to revise my metaphor, flag, regarding other, and roleplay poem. The metaphor poem had to use a metaphors to describe two characters, "I" and "you", the flag poem had to describe what our flag would look like, feel like, et cetera, the regarding other poem described an interaction with a stranger who you wonder about, and the role play poem had to turn "I" into a character who was not you.
I used Self Direction skills for this assignment because, like most of the assignments in this class, I don't really get any professor feedback. Mr. Wood gives us a few sentences of feedback on each draft, but it's often not enough to know exactly what I need to revise. Also, because our class is on cable, I never really get to talk to him, so it's not like I have a professor who is constantly checking to see if I'm working on the submission. I had to figure out how to go about revising and when I would do it without any help from my professor.
I am most proud of my last poem, "The Shopping Cart Man", because I was not proud of my original draft for that assignment, so I started over and had to write a new draft, and revise it. I didn't know how it would go, but I ended up being quite proud of it.
I improved my Self Direction skills during this assignment because I am used to having a teacher who is checking in throughout a project, but with this assignment, I was entirely on my own, so I really had to be self-directed in order to figure out what I needed to do and get it done on time.
The most difficult part of this assignment was getting it finished on time. A few days before it was due, I still had a ton to do and I had a busy first half of the week ahead of me, so I asked Mr. Wood for an extension. Thankfully, he granted it, and I was able to get it in a day earlier than I asked for, but it was still pretty stressful to get done.
If I redid this assignment, I would focus on rewriting my last poem and save the finetuning of my first three poems for later. I think if I did that, I wouldn't have needed to get an extension.
This was pretty similar to what I did with Ms. Emily in my creative writing elective during freshman year, but the expectation and quantity of work was just a lot higher, and there was a lot less feedback throughout the process.
Since I plan to take more creative writing classes in college, this was a good introduction to how large-scale assignments work in a college class and how much feedback can be expected from the professor.