Reflection Essay

 

            Coming into this class, I was your typical DAAP architecture student – all of my other classes were housed in the DAAP building, I avoided lecture courses like the plague, and when asked to do simple math or write an essay, I would respond with, “Sorry, I’m in DAAP, I just draw stuff.”

            While I do indeed draw a lot of stuff, that’s not the only thing an architecture student is required to do – I was blinding myself to the fact that architecture students need to be able to do things like simple math, have a basic understanding of physics, and be able to write. Writing has never been one of my strong suits, and I don’t claim to say that after this semester-long course, I have blossomed into a young Shakespeare. But I will say that I have become much more confident in the realm of reading and writing. This course has prepared me for my chosen field of architecture by providing me with an individualized voice in my writing, as well as allowing me to expand my critical thinking skills.

 

            In all of my design courses, my studio professors have been trying to help us discover our design “style”. Not only should our designs be similar in style, but how we present them should have a personalized look to it. This consistency in style will help me make a name for myself in the future, as well as provide a beautiful, cohesive portfolio for me when presenting myself to future employers. This same idea of style applies to writing. Before this course, when writing I would spatter words across the page, saying all the right things and checking all the right boxes. But they never had any flair, or any spunk – much similar to the first step in the architectural drawing process. It begins with a line drawing, just the framework, much like an essay begins with a subject or a prompt. But slowly I begin to add color to this drawing, adding textures and alternating lines, adding people and trees and shadows and light, till a simple sketch becomes a beautiful, imaginative piece. My writing progressed similarly in this course. It evolved from words to sentences, from sentences to paragraphs – and in turn became a cohesive, spunk-filled writing style.

Now, when reading my essays, I can find commonalities in all of them; there are a plethora of little moves that I take to make an essay my own. Just like using an accent color in my presentations, my essays all have common thread. In our first essay this semester, we wrote a first-person narrative about an influential literacy in our lives – in this essay I employed numerous animal metaphors, one about a lazy seal rolling into an ocean, another about a dear trapped in a fence, and many more. In my next essay, a more formal exploration of genre, I wrote about something very near to my heart and something that you wouldn’t typically find in a college essay: mermaids. But while this maybe wasn’t the obvious easy choice for a research-based essay, it was creative, it was something that I loved, and it was me. I was no longer writing to get by, I was writing because I wanted to.

            In this course we not only wrote essays, but also read many scholarly articles, most of which we were encouraged to reference in our own writing. As an architecture student, I was definitely not thrilled to see required reading as part of the course. I love to read fiction novels when I have the time, but nonfiction writing and I have never gotten along – it never captivated me enough to keep my coming back. In my architecture courses, we read upgraded picture books if we read anything at all, so my critical thinking skills were fairly rusty. But after this course, I now am confident in my critical thinking abilities.

            The essays we read were no doubt difficult to read at times, but most of the critical thinking came into play when I discussed the readings in class rather than reading them myself. In groups we would discuss a few questions about the reading as well as the work as a whole, and through doing this I received a greater understanding of the work then I would have developed on my own. Slowly but surely, I began to add more and more input in these group discussions as I got more and more confident in my critical thinking abilities. Like I mentioned before, we were encouraged to use these readings in our own writing. This sparked an even deeper level of understanding for me, as now I was tasked with taking my initial thoughts on the writing and the ideas presented in class into my own works. And the deeper I got into this layered process of critical thinking, the more I understood these writings and the more I enjoyed them.

            After progressing in these two areas, in my writing style and in my critical thinking abilities, I feel more prepared to enter the professional workplace. Next semester, I will be embarking on my first architectural co-op, and it will no doubt be like nothing I’ve ever experienced before – I hardly know what to expect. I do know, however, that writing is important in most if not all professional practices. As architects, we communicate our ideas through images to each other; it’s a language we all love and understand. But possible clients and other non-architects are not as well-versed in this literacy. We must convey our ideas through words, and through writing in order to reach all audiences, and to get our ideas across without leaving things in the dark. And we must be able to create what they want by critically analyzing their requests and coming up with a solution that benefits all parties involved. I may have been prepared to be an intern architect, but I do not believe I was prepared to be an intern professional. I still do have a lot to learn – but after this course, I am one step closer to getting the most out of my co-op experience, and in turn the most out of my future career.