My Reflection Of Writing In My Humanities Class

Going into this class, I was absolutely confident that I would be able to simply toss some words together and make it through with a decent grade. I have always considered English to be my best subject and historically, I never really had to give papers much work. I just found facts, put them together in a logical way, and moved along. That being said, our first assignment, writing in the humanities threw me for a loop. As soon as I saw that we would be comparing two pieces of art, I realized I had no clue where to begin, nor did I understand how a humanities paper would even be relevant.
Since I had no idea how to begin writing in the humanities, my first reaction was to stare at my computer screen in a state of confusion and disbelief. …show more content…
My humanities course had nothing to do with art, and since I am not an art major, I just did not understand why I should be concerned with writing an essay about a couple of pictures. As it turns out, I learned a lot more about the writing process than I expected, and learned some techniques that will be of use for every paper I write for the rest of my time in college. One of those techniques being prewriting my thesis. The thesis was always the last thing I wrote, but I learned that by writing it beforehand, I have a way to stay on track and organized within the body of my paper. I also found that having a thesis before beginning to actually start my paper helped keep my research and ideas relevant, which really alleviated any confusion during the writing process. The other thing I learned which was probably the most helpful, was paying attention to detail. Writing this paper really made me focus both on my subjects, and on my writing. I had to really study the photographs and place what I saw into words, which I found to be very difficult. While having to examine the photographs closely for relevant information was less than pleasant, I feel like this skill really helped me in my other papers. By really examining details I was able to improve my paraphrasing and summary skills, which will continue to benefit me in future courses. By the time I finished my humanities essay, the reason for the exercise made sense. Even though I am not taking any art history classes or any humanities class that covers art, its relevance, for me, was rooted in organization and critical thinking