Morgan Fratto

          Before entering this class, I believed that we were going to be doing more research papers than any other writing class I have gone through. I thought that we were going to be competing strictly research papers and there would be no room for any kind of personal writing. In my other writing classes before this one, there was a mixture of personal writing and serious research papers. Writing papers was all I ever thought that writing courses were about. When reading the title of this class, I saw the word “research” and thought, “Oh God, this class is going to be papers upon papers of research and she’s probably going to make us write these long, eight-page papers on some boring topics that no one wants to read or write about. Let’s just hope I can get through this without getting bored out of my mind.” I thought that trying to reach your audience needed to be set in a formal tone and in a paper when it came to writing courses, and that the research papers would not be at all personal.

          After getting through this class, I realized that I was wrong. I was able to write about important topics in today’s society that were of my own interest. Writing about music was a great decision and opportunity. I was able to talk about something that I love, while trying to figure out how music impacts society in some way. When I realized that it helps people to connect different songs, or just different music in general, to different people or moments in their lives, I started to write my project one. For project two, I also talked about music, but in the way that it helps people to cope with disorders, like depression and anxiety. For this particular project I was able to be more personal and use my dad as the figure for my topic. Then, coming into project three, I became more personal and used the topic about how music has helped people cope with depression and anxiety, and used myself as the main figure. Through this last project, I found out that we could reach our different audiences through different genres, such as a YouTube video and a personal letter, rather than just a paper assignment. Using these two genres for an English assignment instead of writing an eight-page paper on the issue showed me that we could connect to different audiences with our topics. This class has helped me understand that, when creating any type of informational piece, I should be writing to a particular audience and that my tone would help me to reach that particular audience.