Informal Writing #1 - Freshman Seminar

My freshman seminar that I took last quarter was very writing oriented. The class I took was called Celluloid Government: American Politics through Film. In this class, we would watch a political movie every Monday and discuss the films on Wednesdays. As we watched the films we were required to take notes about the given theme that we were prompted with before the film. During discussions we would go very in depth about the plot, characters, and themes of the film and how it related to politics and what we were talking about in class. These discussions really helped to prepare for writing papers on the films and were a good way to clear up any questions or confusing parts of the films. We did not write papers every week; however we would write them every 2 to 3 weeks or so about the movies we had seen. Often times, two consecutive movies would have similar themes like good guys/bad guys, the significance of cinematography, corrupt cities or groups, and other topics of that nature. Most of the papers were compare and contrast papers linking politics into a certain topic like previously stated within 2 or 3 films. Most of these papers were around 3-6 pages typed and double spaced and really forced you to analyze movies for similarities and themes rather than simply watching them for enjoyment. I did enjoy this class and the papers we wrote because analyzing movies is something that interests me, yet I was challenged by the political nature of most of the assignments because I am not very interested in politics.
I feel that I was very well prepared by my high school for college writing at The University of Denver. I took a Rhetoric class my senior year and I feel that that class really boosted my writing skills in many different fields of writing. Throughout high school, I wrote many different kinds of papers such as poems, persuasive papers, research papers, narrative papers, debates and other things too. Overall, I feel I am very ready to be enrolled in college writing courses.