English 102 Assignment

In August of 2014, I began my college career at Columbia College; as a Midland Valley High School alum, I quickly thrust myself into a new environment. Columbia College is a private, and small, women’s college planted in the Richland County school district, a short eight minute drive from the University of South Carolina. Upon entering, I became active in many on-campus organizations, such as NAACP, Alpha Beta Tau, and much more; I attempted to leave my reserved self in the past. My last year there, sophomore year, I worked as a desk assistant for the freshman dormitory, leaving me with adequate time to work on my, seemingly, mounds of homework. I enrolled in USCA in the fall of 2016. I have, adamantly, decided to stick with my biology major,

I feel that there is a consistently informative quality about many of the writings I have provided for both campuses. I have chosen one paper from Columbia College, and two from current USCA courses. The paper from Columbia College is an annotation of Pages Matam’s poem, “Piñata.” The English 102 course I took was based on poetry, we were asked to choose our favorite poem and explicate it. One of the essays from USCA, is an informative look at political interest groups; we were asked to research one interest group for Political Science 201. My last paper is actually a book report from my Geology 101 course; we had to choose a scientific book to read and review. I feel that all three of the papers network perfectly with my biology major, due to the topics having to be researched, reviewed, and relayed in such a way that others will not be bogged down. The essays written for Geology and Political Science are probably more so topics that many may not understand, due to lack of interest or study, and should simply be relayed to the audience. The English 102 essay offers an interpretation of one man’s work. I feel that, as a future biologist, my job will involve researching topics, reviewing studies, and relaying information to the mass public in a way that both stimulates and eases the

Hait’s “Survey of Contemporary Poetry”. Dr. Hait was a poetry fanatic. The class focused on reading and analyzing contemporary poems, while creating our own anthology of modern poetry. Our first big assignment was to read a poem and explicate it; I chose Pages Matam’s poem, “Piñata”. The grading criteria for this assignment was not harsh; we were mainly expected to explain the poem while quoting the poet. My essay introduced Dr. Hait to Pages Matam’s work, as did my anthology. I was given an “A” for this essay due to the loose criteria and “my wonderful handling of a sensitive topic.” I have made two revisions to this essay: a rough draft and grammatical revisions to the final