Dear Reader,

This past semester in UWRT 1101 has been a different experience with writing for me. In
years past typical papers consisted of reading factual information and rewriting it in your own
words and then cite the sources. But in this class there was more of a personal approach to all
the assignments. For the genre assignment we still had to do research on the genre but were
allowed to throw in our own opinions about said genre. I chose to do Rockabilly which is a
mixture of rock, country and many other different genres of music. This music style has a kind
of jazzy jig feel with the sound of rock instruments and is typically an upbeat genre. Another
change with this class is that I was able to change what topic I wanted to use for a paper. With
the same example of the genre paper I had originally chosen rock as my genre but found this
genre that I didnt even know about. I actually learned about an entirely new genre of music
that I really enjoy in this class which Ive never done before. Being so interested in the topic of
my paper made it so much easier to write the paper. This proved true for my literacy narrative
as well.
Writing my literacy narrative was perhaps one of the easiest papers I have ever written
in my life. But certainly the easiest in this class. The obvious topic for this paper is literacy or
how I became literate in a certain field. I immediately knew that I wanted to do my paper on
how I became musically literate. What made this paper so easy is the fact that I was in band for
7 years starting in 6th grade through my senior year in high school. This 7 year development
process gave me enough information and a good bulk of stories to mention on how I became
musically literate. Although I could have written a book with all the information that I have
about becoming musically literate, I chose to stick with one simple moment of realization

where it became apparent to me that I had grown so much. I simply told the story of the time
when I had to play a solo which had a single note for a very long time in the first play through of
the song. This one note eventually was stretched out into a 35 to 40 second long note. Reading
this may seem like its not that big of a deal but let me assure you, holding out a mid-range b
flat note on a trumpet for around 40 seconds in one breath while trying not to be outplayed by
60+ other band members after playing consistently for 10 minutes prior to even playing this 4
minute long song where this particular solo just happens to be near the end of the song is not
as easy as reading, I held out a note for 40 seconds. And this little rant is a perfect example of
the freedom and creativeness I can express about a topic Im really interested in. It also shows
how easy it is to take this one simple sentence of, I played a note for 40 seconds into a nearly
paragraph long rant about how difficult this simple sentence really is.
With all of this in mind I see how easy it was for me to open up my mind and explore all
of the possibilities with what I can write on a single topic. But aside from all of the positive
aspects of this class I eventually hid a dead end where my creativity took its own control and
clouded my vision on the goal of my mini ethnography. In this assignment I took the angle of
how people think stereotypically about the lives of trumpet players and try to prove and
disprove these stereotypes. This wasnt exactly what we were instructed to do but trying to
make my paper more interesting ended up putting my paper in a bad position to be graded
lower than what it could have been.
All in all creativity and originality are not a problem for me but maintaining a viewpoint
that makes sense and fits the description of the assignment is where I need to focus on

improving. I know I can ramble on and make any sentence last forever, because Ive always
written and talked like that.
-Daniel Harrill