Work Self-Evaluation: ENG 392

Compared to last semester’s poetry class (ENG 294), I feel it has been easier for me to write poetry that I like. It seems like the poetry I have written was not forced out, or pulled out of dark places. This may be due to having "more" time to write poetry, or possibly from more dedication and encouragement. I can read my poetry and it doesn’t sound foreign. I have been able to express myself very well through the poetry I have written this semester. After I write down an idea or a partial poem, I can look at it and think "Wow, that’s some pretty cool shit." From that point, I sometimes put the fragment away, or finish it out and type it later. This has actually helped me to revise my work as I type it in to the computer. It seems like I see more mistakes, rephrase lines, and add new ideas when I finally type the work. I remember a few weeks when I would come up with roughly five or six new poems, then possibly none on the other weeks. However, my strength has been with those five or six good poems, compared to (possibly) seven or eight poems with less quality. I experienced a very rich flow of ideas this semester, and my ability to compose them in to a poem has given much strength to my writing. I can only hope that my ideas will stay flowing, or at least take no longer than a year of vacation.

This idea leads to what I may consider a weakness. It has been fairly hard to perform any major revisions to the poetry I have written. The peer editing sessions have helped in this aspect. It has helped to get feedback from other brains, and hear the opinions and interpretations given by others, to make an attempt at revising the work to better convey my thoughts or express my ideas to other people.

Another weakness is what I would categorize as availability. There have been instances while walking around campus that I think of a poem or idea for a poem. I might even repeat it to myself a few times. Of course, when I find paper and a writing tool, the idea has already escaped. I almost always carry paper and pen around with me, in my shoulder bag, but as soon as I put it down, dig out paper and pen, the idea seems to run away. Fortunately, as shown in my work, I have been able to retain most of the ideas.

Both a weakness and a strength found this semester dealt with time. There were some weeks when I had an abundance of free time. Other weeks, it seemed like I didn’t have much time at all. According to my time management, I occasionally did not utilize my free time well. It would then catch up with me on weeks that I had job interviews and additional meetings, compared to normal. I think time management is one area that all humans work on constantly. For some people, this aspect improves. For others, it declines. To describe my time management skills over the past five years of attending Central Michigan University, I believe my skills have slightly improved. There are still days when I wished I wasn’t lazy the past day or week, and some days when I see my time has been very efficiently organized. Call me human, and I am proud to be such.