Over the course of this semester I explored sub genres in the genre of Food, Culture, History, and Society in the assignments that I undertook. The assignments include a food narrative, exploratory essay, research historiography paper, and presentation. We had two components of the class one that focused on writing and the other focused on the content of the assignments and involved the first three assignments for the course. During the course I realized more and more how unprepared I was for the writing and my assignments are attempts to write according to the rules given to the class by the teachers. I had difficulty with all the assignments as I learned after completing the course that I can’t imagine a life thinking about food history. During these assignments I practiced course learning outcomes(CLOs) mainly the ones on developing strategies for revising, collaboration with peer reviews, exploring and analyzing a variety of genres, locating research sources, citation conventions, and using digital technology to address a range of audiences.

The first assignment I had was the food narrative which is writing in a first person perspective about a personal food moment in which food could have a moral or significance in the moment. I thought of a couple of moments, but they weren’t really personal, more like primal emotional hunger. The problem of having no personal significance to food meant that I really had to exaggerate the sensation of food consumption and try to remember any significant connect to my life. If I did not have enough, I would have to think about more connections that in reality were arbitrary. I am not proud of the final result and it gave me a hint that the rest of the course was not going to be enjoyable either. The CLO I practiced was developing strategies for peer review and revising.

The second assignment was the exploratory essay which was about analyzing the sources used in an academic paper. The instructor allow us to choose one of three academic papers to analyze how the authors of the papers use sources. I chose to analyze a paper on the exchange of rice across the atlantic ocean and I had to look at the sources used to decide whether the author effectively used the sources and appropriately. I gave my own opinion on how effective the author’s source use was, but I don’t think I had effectively explained it. The instructors for the two class also had different ideas of what the paper should be about or how the analysis of the papers should be. The content oriented instructor was advising just looking at the source and judging in our view whether the source was credible or any patterns of the papers, however the writing oriented instructor wanted a less opinionated view on the sources. My teacher advised choosing a specific section to focus on to select sources from and analyze. The CLO I practiced in this assignment was locating research sources such as when I had to find the sources Carney uses by copying the citation in the bibliography and searching it on the internet.

The third assignment was the researched historiography paper and involved searching for 5 sources to make an argument on scholarship. I was allowed to choose one of several topics given to the class and I chose honey. The process for searching for sources and a debate on honey was difficult because I didn’t really understand what to look for and was not comfortable going through multiple academic papers about honey. I had an individual appointment with my instructor on the content that I was to write about and I showed him what I had then he pointed out a possible debate I could write about. I then constructed the debate by finding authors who may have an opinion and focused on one of their works while also using  their other works to get a more complete view they would have on the topic of honey. I lost interest due to the difficulties I had with continuing the debate and I admit that I speculated a little with my debate. I practiced locating sources, using citation conventions, integrating texts to my stance, and exploring genres of writing.

The final assignment was a presentation on chosen topics of which I chose to write about a field trip I had. This was the assignment that allowed me to be loose and I enjoyed completing it, because there weren’t too many rules about requirements or structure. The presentation was ten minutes split into two for five minutes for the slides and five minutes for questions. I was able to freely use my knowledge acquired from a trip I made to a farmers market and present it to my classmates. During the presentation I had so much information to present that I didn’t get to my audience interaction segment where I tested the audience on the information I presented. I think the question part of the presentation went well as the conversations from it was engaging. I was able to practice using technology to address a range of audiences which were my classmates.

In conclusion I was able to practice many of the course learning outcomes, but I think that the only course learning outcome I mastered was collaborating with peers. After doing the assignments I don’t think I would’ve taken the class given that the assignments were very rigid. I would’ve wanted more direct guidance and more time for explanations of assignments as the unfamiliarity of what the assignments required made them more difficult than they needed to be.