Antigone Reflection

Prior to taking this class, my only real experience with writing consisted of text messages, e-mails, and employee appraisals. Influenced largely by the casual nature of social networking, I never took the time to reflect on my inability to communicate clearly and professionally via the written word. Given the relative success I experienced after dropping out of high school, I never really developed an appreciation for higher education. I worked primarily with my hands and didn’t understand the need to seek colligate writing skills. I planned to make my living off of the skills of my trade and had no intentions of expanding my career opportunities with needless classes. Now that I am in my thirties and lead a large military workforce, I am

Putting all the parts of writing together is what makes a good piece of writing. Over the semester, my realization of what I was doing wrong paired with the different formatting strategies and the desire to become a better writer has helped me to become better overall. I believe that practice makes perfect, and while I have not perfected my writing or even come close yet, I believe that I have gotten closer to being a proficient writer. I believe that this class has helped me to get closer to becoming a proficient writer, and will help me in my future classes and

Personally, from the class of English 1101, I have learned on how to use the writing processes effectively, where the first step is to have a pre-write, which focuses on brainstorming ideas form either the group or from individuals’ brain for the required topic. The second phase of the process is the thesis statement, which is the primary idea of the entire essay. I discovered that the thesis statement should be persuasive and truthful. The third step is on developing drafts, where it showed me on how to focus on content, organization, and style. Again, I noted that I must ask myself who is my audience, and what do they want or need to hear.

Over the past four months, I have made great strides as a writer. The area where I have seen the most growth is in my use of the writing process. Prior to my enrollment in this course, I would sit down and write all my papers in one sitting. This class has taught me how to lay out a plan for my papers. I have learned how to effectively brainstorm/research, draft, and revise my writings before I complete them. Also I have learned to not just stop there, instead I am now going back and reflecting on my work after I complete it. This allows me to identify where I prospered and also where my downfalls may have been. With this information, I am able to apply this to future writings of mine; lessons that will stay with me forever.

This course offers numerous opportunities to improve our writing. In this class, I not only enhanced the skills I already had, but also learned new writing concepts. Before I took this class, I knew that my writing is poor, and I have always wanted to improve it; however, I did not know how and what aspects of writing to improve. So, I came into this class with the ambition to improve my writing, and I have accomplished my goal although there is still room for improvement. At this point of this course, I have learned the elements that successful writing is composed of, and I am now able to categorize the various techniques that can work together to define strong

John F. Kennedy once said “A man must do what he must in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures...and that is the basis of human morality”. But when someone’s ambition is to do something wrong, how does their actions reflect on their morality? In the play Antigone by Sophocles, Antigone and King Creon’s decisions and choices reflect on their consequences and morality. One of the main characters in play, King Creon, makes some awful decisions that make him reflect on his own moral values. Another character, Antigone has a compulsive motive to bury her brother, Polynices, but she isn’t allowed to transgress the king’s command and despite the consequences she still attempts to bury Polyneices. Lawrence Kohlberg and Carol Gilligan are two psychologists that created the Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development and Gilligan’s Ethics of Care Theory scales which show where one’s morality may rank depending on one’s actions. Even though Creon and Antigone started with the same circumstances and conditions, their morality causes them to stand on different levels and stages on Lawrence Kohlberg’s and Carol Gilligan’s scales and as well as on other Moral scales.

During the interactive oral regarding Antigone, I learned that during Ancient times, the role of Greek women were not as equal to that of men. The main subjects covered in the discussion were the setting (Ancient Greece), the role of women, and the importance of a proper burial during the period. The tragedy was written around 441 B.C. (at that time Ancient Greece was influenced by a patriarchal society), and women were treated poorly and viewed as inferior to men.

This is the last week of the course and so far, I've seen a lot of improvement in my writing. At first I was feeling nervous taking this class and wondering what challenges I might have to face. As I mentioned in the beginning of the term, most of my writing I completed through the community college. The last time I remember creating an outline was about 12 years ago. From my first discussion I indicated having certain weaknesses in writing. For instance, avoiding to carefully read any material that is given to me. This often caused me to misunderstand the requirements notated in the assignments. After reading the professor's suggestion to look over the rubric for guidance. I did as I was told instead of for the first time reading the activities

At the beginning of the class this year, I didn’t expect o to well right off the bat of the college level writing course because I had always struggled with English in middle school through high school. To my surprise though, I have learned many things this semester and have already used some of these skills in other papers in other classes I had. Thanks to the help of Sue Oakes, I can now say proudly that I can actually write a decent paper and feel rather confident about it.

When writing I forget to use commas, but now after writing several papers I don’t overlook them anymore. Another problem I had was that sometimes when I have to complete a word requirement or a page requirement, I add some fluff. I use some words that are useless in the essay, just to meet the requirement. Writing is just more than just meeting requirements, it takes time and effort. Before this class, I never really used to revise. Getting back my first grade, I realized that revision is important. This is what I learned about myself as a writer and with this class I have improved on some of these

Through the various writing assignments throughout the duration of this course, I have found out many things about myself as a writer. Each of the assignments in their own particular way better prepared me for the next. Starting with the report. From the moment this was assigned to the class, I automatically knew what my report would focus on. I had never really had to write a report before due to my high school not adequately preparing me for such but anyhow I still knew what I wanted to discuss. While writing this report, I often times struggled to reach my nightly word count for the designated times I had for working on this paper. Although reaching the word count started as a struggle, the real struggle for the report paper came when I had to use the skills I should have learned in grade school but did not and incorporate in text citations and use MLA formatting. This was a struggle for me for the entire semester because I have never been formally taught on how to do these things correctly. So this posed as a huge challenge for me. But overall, I feel as though on the report I put forth my best possible work simply because I was very engaged with the topic and wanted to explore more about it.

I feel that the College Writing course benefited my ability as a writer. It increased my confidence about college-level academic writing. I now feel I have broadened my range of different issues and I am much more comfortable discussing and writing about them. Moreover, After writing down two assignments, summary, and an analysis, using different writing concepts from "Reading 3" I have enhanced my style of writing that it had introduced to me. The two assignments that I worked on for this Directed Self-Placement test really challenged me to revise my writing. My first assignment served as a preface to the new style of academic writing. My focus in this assignment was not on strictly enforcing the writing concepts taught to me, rather learning

The first two pages of Antigone caught my attention for many reasons. We can see that these first two pages are a conversation between, two sisters Antigone and Ismene. As we read, we notice that they are arguing about if bury or not their brother. Antigone wants to bury him, stating that he was a good man and his body deserves a right funeral. On the other hand, Ismene understands the point of Antigone, but she prefers not do anything because she is afraid of what the king would do to them. The lines with which I feel identified are at the bottom of page 749, and they say ‘Think how much worse our deaths will be – abandoned as we are – if we defy the king’s proclamation and his power. Remember we’re women. How can we fight men? They’re stronger. We must accept these things – and worse to come.’ In these lines, I could tell how scared Ismene was, but at the same time, I understand Antigone’s point. It is the first time in this class that I have understood both sides, and I have not had a strong answer for a particular situation. I think that I feel this because if one of my brothers pass away. I would like to give him a right funeral, not because he is an excellent person, or has any extraordinary abilities, but because he is my brother. On the other hand, I understand Ismene’s point of view because I am a type of person that likes to follow the rules and more if the violation of those rules lead to severe punishments like the ones Ismene mentioned in the passage.

A play is defined through many aspects: the actors, the setting, and the script. The success of a play is determined by the combination of these aspects, and work together to develop a play that properly conveys its story to the audience. Our production of Antigone was a tremendous success due to excellent actors, well-written script, and thoughtful design. Through the communal effort of everyone in the class, we were able to develop a serious and impactful rendition of Antigone. Each of us provided a different contribution to creating this play, and it was our collaboration that led to the success of the play.

I want to start off by giving a bit of my writing background because there isn’t one. I took this class because I wanted to step outside of my comfort zone, which I did. I have never written anything worth submitting for a grade, but I figured this class would be a good place to start. Reflecting back on where I began, and where I am now, there is a huge difference. I now find myself thinking of themes and ideas to write about. I do not have a good understanding of how well I write, or what is interesting to other people. However, I do think that this experience has helped me better understand myself.