Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

[edit] I Reflect

Looking back on our very first essay in English 112 brings me surprise. Other emotions come out as well but the experience was surprising because of its intensity. Gasp! I learned something. Excuse me, I learned a lot. Can I explain what I learned?

Interestingly enough the distance between the previous question and the beginning of this sentence is very small to you. There was quite a mountain to traverse on my end approximately one hundred and twenty seconds long. Whoops, there was another.

If my friend Pete does not stop doing drugs I will never see him again. Should I have placed this statement here? Was that a reflection upon what I learned from the assignment in question? Maybe I want to write about it.

And there it is. The biggest thing I learned is to want to write. This hasn’t happened to me to such a degree before. Writing has always been an activity I felt affinitive to but not of a disposition to. The skills never seemed implausible to acquire, but writing never seemed necessary either.

There is a catch in the preceding observation. I don’t think anything is necessary…unless you want it to be. That’s why I have to want writing to be necessary in order for it to become so. Unfortunately I don’t want it to be necessary. A gray area exists wherein a desire to write can manifest itself, circumstantially, but it’s accompanied by a lack of motivation. Communication is the mother of writing but I like her other child. This child is raw, neither censored nor enhanced by any technology but that to live. She is not just speech, she is body language. The difference between speech and body language is undefined in my mind. For practical purposes, though, I will assume speech is part of body language which simply refers to everything that happens when people are physically communicating. They can look each other in the eyes, they can create sound, they can emanate an aura, they can have sex. They can say, “Damn it, you need to put ‘and’ after that last comma!”

Marking it on the printed page has different implications. I could not hear the vocation or see the manner of the speaker. I also could not voice my own reason to omit the word ‘and.’ Sure, by thinking ahead I can voice that reason right now, but then the reader will not sense my expression in the same way either. Writing does allow a voice to come out and even adds something with the physical appearance and structure of the words. However, I still identify more fully with being in person. Writing also allows time to be redefined as I joked about earlier, but I identify much more fully with right now. Being focused on the present moment led me to decide not to erase anything I write on this reflection. After I wrote “They can say, ‘Damn it, you need to put ‘and’ after that last comma!” I realized that we were actually assigned to address ourselves. Well, Michael, that was a good move. You love irony. You do. You can’t figure out why either. I think you should explain Michael Martel more clearly. It is very hard, I know. I must apologize because you he really didn’t want to say that. Addressing myself has sent your brain into convulsions.

Where and when are you? I don’t know where he is.

We are beginning to want to write about it.