The Spring 2019 section of Intermediate Composition, taught by Professor Gary Vaughn, has helped me both to improve my skills as a writer and reader as well as improve my skills as a researcher. During the first month of the class, I wrote my essay, “Answering Big Questions with Happy Accidents: Realizing My Artistic Literacy,” about my developing artistic skills and connected my lifelong interest in creating and perfecting to my future career interest in neuroscience research. Additionally, this class helped me conduct my own research experiment, having each of us conduct an ethnography of a certain discourse community and having us draw new conclusions about discourse communities as a whole. For example, through examining my class “Introduction to Game Design,” I was able to figure out that the ethos of a college professor does not impact their ability to relate to the students and establish themselves as an integral part of the classroom.

          On a broader scale, this class helped me to realize my passion for research and exercise my curiosity on a subject that I never thought to explore in a classroom setting. I plan to use my newfound writing skills next year in particular when applying for the Goldwater Scholarship, where I must write a research proposal about a particular project – something I have gained experience writing during Intermediate Composition.