My opinions on the OpEd

I thought that the OpEd assignment was a good way to start the year in Writing 150. I enjoy writing my opinions and trying to construct logical arguments to convince people to agree with me, and I felt like this assignment allowed me to do so with enough freedom so as not to stifle my voice.

The voice in my paper was overwhelmingly pessimistic, but as a fairly pessimistic person, it is hard for me to keep that out of my writing, especially when you are complaining about a system that you think needs to be changed. To counter that pessimism in my paper, I came up with what I thought was an optimistic, ideal compromise to the issue I was addressing (general education requirements should be removed).

I am very passionate about my topic, and that made it much easier to write my OpEd and come up with arguments to support my side. I also enjoyed thinking of counter arguments and refuting them in my paper. The assignments where I write about topics I am passionate about are always more fun for me to work on than topics that are forced on you by teachers (which I had a lot of in high school)

The hardest part of this assignment for me was writing a rough draft. This always seems to be the most difficult aspect of writing a paper for me, especially when I am first starting on the paper and have to come up with a introduction. I spent at least an hour just staring at my computer screen trying to come up with a good introduction. It is frustrating sometimes, and makes me feel kind of stupid. But after I get past the introduction the paper almost seems to write itself!

Overall, the OpEd was a challenging but fun assignment, and in my opinion, a great beginning of the semester assignment.

And just because I thought this was a funny picture...