I love the new semester. I've heard rumors that my workshop teacher for the Spring was going to be pretty tough, but so far, he hasn't been too harsh. He's definitely a stickler for grammar, but he's also helpful with his suggestions in how to clean up our writing pieces. I admire him for the one thing he said to one of my classmates after pointing out all the things he didn't like about her submission was, "Just because I don't like your piece doesn't mean you have to change anything. There are plenty of great writers who write in the same style as you." So he means that he's giving his opinion, but that's just it -- it's only his opinion and not the rules of writing.
Our seminar teacher is pretty nice too. I like her method of teaching. We read the book, discuss it and then she gives a writing assignment based a theme found in the book. For example, with Johnny Tremain, it was "describe a scene which shows a specific time and place." Or with Peter Pan, our assignment was "a scene in which a character experiences something out of the ordinary."
I feel like my writing skills have improved immensely since the last semester. When I look back on my older pieces, I can see grammatical errors and places where my writing could be tighter or needs more descriptive sentences. When I critique my classmates' submissions for our workshop class, I use to make comments more about the consistency of events or spelling errors. Now I notice I'm making more comments about the quality of the writing as well. My eye has definitely become better at catching these things.
I just regret that I didn't have these skills in the first semester. :(
