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            I started out this semester as a lost and confused first year, stumbling into my first classes of college, unsure of what to expect while trying not to expect anything. As I moved through the semester, both in this class an in the rest of my life, I began to gain my footing and learn to balance so that I could stand on my own two feet.

            As a writer I came to the class confident (perhaps too confident) about my abilities as a writer and a thinker. However, with the first web event that we did for this class, that confidence was shattered because I realized that I could only write in one way and that was not the way we were writing for this class. I had a tendency to write everything in a more scientific, business like style that made it very hard for me to loosen up my writing process and learn to be playful with my writing. However, in the first part of the semester I had to write so many papers for this class in that way that I eventually learned to relax into the writing process. I learned to let the words flow rather than trying to calculate each piece of my essay and have everything set before I even started writing.

            Later in the semester we began to do more structured papers and I was able to reintroduce my scientific writing style a bit more. However, with all the practice I had recently had with more free form writing, I couldn’t switch back fully to my old ways. I learned to mix the two styles so that I could begin to write papers that were serious but still had playful elements to them.

            For me, this forced development of my writing style forced me to confront a major edge to my learning. For quite a while I could not let myself write in new ways, every paper was a painful endeavor that felt like it had unsatisfying results for all I had out into it. However, as mentioned earlier, I was able overcome this learning edge and now I’m at a point where all the doors are open for me to continue the growth that already began this semester.

            As a city player I learned a lot that has helped me both personally and as a writer. For me, the most important lesson gained from the adventures into Philadelphia was to be open to anything. I learned to really go into every situation with an open mind so that I had the opportunity to find whatever was there waiting for me rather than just what I was looking for.

            Overall, I feel like my participation in the class was also something that developed over the course of the semester. I tried all semester to embrace everything we did in this class and let it teach me what it would, but I feel like my ability to become involved in the class has grown over the semester as I have grown. The more I learned, the more involved I felt and became.

            In general, the lessons that I have learned from this class are ones that I can carry with me and continue to use in the future both personally and academically. For me, this was the true value of the course and large part of what I will carry with me from it.