Reflections

This last bit is about learning. Oh sure, the whole thing is about learning and all of us coming together to write about travel and place is designed to check off the learning goals and to give you a sense of how you might do some travel writing in a way that an audience might find interesting, and maybe, in a way that earns you a few bucks. But what did you really learn?

If you really want to learn something, you have to be able to rehearse it. I could have had you write the same genre 8 times this term, so that you might become an adept listicle writer or a wizard of the travelogue, but instead, I gave you the buffet. Maybe you will go back for seconds of shrimp or a feature in a week or a year, but maybe not. What I think is important is a bit of reflection. Reflection allows us to consider our experiences in more detail, and reinforces the cognitive connections. If you want to remember something, then spend time thinking about it. However, reflection also takes us a step further into insight, giving us a method to consider something from different perspectives and more deeply. I want you to reflect on the term.

Thus, for this last module, I want you to reflect a bit about where you have been in this class and what you have learned. Your answer could be that you learned not a thing. If that is the case, you might see me in a corner at Spanky’s unintentionally seasoning a Blue Moon with my tears. But I’m confident you learned something, even if it is that you are more willing to talk to strangers, or try new things without checking Yelp first, or that writing can be fun.

There is no separate assignment page for this module—the assignment is simply the following:

What did you learn?

You will send it to me via email (richard.colby@du.edu) and NOT post it to the blog. I don’t care how long or how short it is. I just want to see that you spend some time thinking about everything you did in class and what made the biggest impact or changed how you see writing or travel or both. Feel free to refer to pieces you wrote or read from your classmates or the samples you provided.

Due dates

• Reflection email due Friday, November 20