When you start college, you don’t just start classes; you start a new journey with wonders to unfold. English as a language has always been with me from the beginning until now and has been developing throughout my life. But from the time I stepped into Ms. Vicars class, the significance of English took three sixty-degree turns. Before, it only meant a means to communicate, but after only being in the first class, I realized that class was going to be a whole lot different from my regular classes.

I still remember being nervous at the time we had class on our first day of college. I entered class on the third floor, room three hundred eight. As I sat in my seat, I wondered how hard this class would turn out to be because I was not confident in my English and also because various people had told me that college is tough. When Ms. Vicars introduced herself, it was very nice, as she was friendly. I was surprised when she asked us to form a circle and then asked for an introduction. I felt like I belonged there, and that made me happy. Till now, that has been my favorite part, as it was really unique.

During the first few weeks, this class made me emphasize the way I viewed the English language, and that made me realize that it was taught until that point that English was nothing more than just a means to achieve success. The course readings made me realize that English transcends boundaries and is a form of life in a way, and “using our voice” was the most important lesson I learned from those readings. The reading notes helped me summarize, analyze, and synthesize the meaning of those texts. I read them multiple times to understand what they communicated, and that was worth the time. Moreover, in the L&L Narrative Essay, we had to illustrate a situation that we had gone through that expressed how attitudes towards linguistic standards empowered and oppressed language users. I wrote about how I was accused of someone else’s misconduct in using that language, which made me realize that what one writes matters.

Next up, this class has allowed me to explore and analyze a variety of genres and rhetorical situations through the group presentations. Our group presented about ‘‘Ishow Speed visiting India for the first time”. In that, we explored the cultural shifts that blew his mind, and he really enjoyed the vibe there. We analyzed how different people spoke, the way they took turns, and their status, which had an effect on the way they spoke. Our group first had some trouble starting, but by the time we finished, we had built strong teamwork and felt a sense of accomplishment. It was through individual and group presentations that we used print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences. This allowed my words to be more expressive, as they could imagine how things went through all those images, and thus they could connect with you. Receiving feedback from them on the work I had put effort into was really great, and I still have all those feedback notes from my classmates. 

Finally, we were asked to choose any topic of our interest and write a research paper on it. I did not take much time to think, as I knew what I was going to write about. I chose to write about the effect that the development of artificial intelligence is going to have on people, both on a personal and professional level. To write our research paper, we had to locate various sources and then check to see if they were credible. So I took a lot of new articles from well-known newspapers, like one article from the Washington Post with the title “ChatGPT took their jobs. Now they walk dogs and fix air conditioners (2023),” which illustrated the effects that ChatGPT, which is an artificial intelligence software, had on the jobs of certain people, and they ended up losing their jobs. 

Furthermore, to make my research paper more interesting and strong, I included an argument from a scholar-reviewed essay about how artificial intelligence was going to affect the workforce in India and who would be at most risk of losing their jobs to artificial intelligence. The research paper allowed me to work on how to write the citations in a more systematic way, and I hope I can improve more with all those citations. I didn’t know what even the word citation meant in the beginning, but by the time I finished my research essay, I was used to doing that. Drafting really helped me with my research paper, as I just freely wrote the first draft and didn’t even finish the whole paper, but that created a base to expand on. Moreover, the peer review advice from my classmates was really helpful because they told me the strengths of my paper and what I could do to improve it. Finally, I used logos in most of the research paper to highlight that artificial intelligence was going to bring more harm than benefits to people as a whole by showing evidence from different sources. I also used pathos to somewhat move the audience to agree with my conclusions by making an argument to put themselves in place of people who already lost their jobs to artificial intelligence.

As a writer, I feel like I have now developed at a whole different level because I myself can see my progress through my writing prompts because they have allowed me to put my thoughts on the questions in the prompts clearly on the paper, which wasn’t the case during the first few weeks as I hesitated to do so. The improvement of my analyzing skills has allowed me to create more structured and “voice-integrated” writings. This class has been one of the best things that happened to me in America.

Citations

Usher, By Barbara Plett. “India Population: The Job Crisis Driving Millions to Big Cities.” BBC News, 19 Apr. 2023, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65309567.

Verma, Pranshu, and Gerrit De Vynck. “ChatGPT Took Their Jobs. Now They Walk Dogs and Fix Air Conditioners.” Washington Post, 2 June 2023, www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/02/ai-taking-jobs/.