My second semester at UD is one that I certainly won’t forget. Looking back on it already, I view it in two distinct parts. I feel pretty far removed from the first half of the semester when I was on campus. I think I’ll always feel sad about how it was cut so short. Finishing out the year from home was a whole different experience from the little time I had spent away at college.

While this semester was unconventional, I still feel like I received a strong education. I learned many things, including climate science, music history, macroeconomic principles, how to use Microsoft Excel, and from this class, I learned how to write from the heart. Well, I guess didn’t really learn “how” to, but I learned that I could do it.

After the first couple assignments in English 110, I could tell that this wasn’t going to be like any English class I was used to. It was liberating to have the opportunity each week to basically write about whatever I wanted. At first, I was a bit timid when it came to these assignments and afraid to fully express myself in my writing. However, whether it be from the group readings we had in our Gore Hall classroom or from the weekly comments during the quarantine, I eventually learned that people were going to be supportive and engaged no matter what I wrote, as long as my writing was honest.

During quarantine, I began to look forward to writing these blog posts because in a way it was sort of therapeutic. During such a stressful period with so much time to think, sometimes I just felt like I needed to get it all out of my system. That’s why these assignments started to not really feel like schoolwork anymore. I obviously recognize now that I don’t need English 110 assignments as an outlet to express myself, but this semester I learned that writing is healthy for the mind. So in the future, I look forward to getting all my thoughts down somewhere every once in a while just to stay sane.