(This is a picture of her to the right. I googled her, she's almost as popular as Kanye!)
Although I was quiet most of the time in class. I never had the chance to express my gratitude towards Dr. Kyburz. She is such a sweet, patient, understanding professor. I have never had a writing professor like her throughout all my years in school. Especially because this is college level writing, she made it feel easy all while challenging us along the way. It wasn't stressful, she took it class by class to where she could see where we needed more time and where we needed more guidance. She made my least favorite subject less fearful and slowly helped me gain confidence within my own writing.
Some of the things I learned in her class not just in Writing in the Disciplines class, but also College Writing was knowing who my target was and how I should use different styles of writing to get my point across without using any biased opinions. She helped keep me in check with sticking to one perspective, such as writing my entire paper in first person or third person because I used to incorporate both... a lot!
One of the projects that helped me focus on these two techniques was the documentary project. It was a fun assignment having to watch a film from a list of choices she gave us and then just learning how to properly share the summary of the film to an audience without showing any bias, and expanding on details of what happen.
Another helpful assignment was the mock trial we did in class. It let us work in groups (that's how I met new people) and come up with our own interrogation and interview questions. It gave us a chance to let our creative sides come out. Take advantage, since most classes in college are lectures and can be very boring. My group was great to work with, and we ended up getting a confession from the person we interrogated which shocked us all! Our class was a quiet group but this project in particular is what helped us come out of our shells and forced us to speak and make new friends.
We read Report Writing for Law Enforcement, and it was pretty valuable information. I learned different types of reports which was a more in depth explanation than the second project we did on the types of police report presentations. The exercises she gave us were refreshers of things I had forgotten about that I learned in high school along with helpful tips on what we should expect to see and do for those of us going into law enforcement. There was a lot of little things that I didn't know and surprisingly, some of it was common sense. Go figure. Dr. Kyburz did a great job explaining and giving examples so we can engrave it in our heads for the near future especially the importance of the Oxford comma!
Reading the textbook helped my group incorporate all the new skills we learned with writing our final project, writing a police report. She let us be creative once again, but except this time, we knew she expected our narratives to be clear, concise, and full of details because that's what we have been talking about almost all semester.
Taking Writing in the Disciplines with Dr. Kyburz was a great experience. I felt comfortable enough to ask her questions as well as confident in myself to be able to complete her assignments. Other professors give me anxiety when I have to do their assignments.
Thank you Dr. Kyburz for all your wonderful stories and advise. As my final semester approaches I am glad I was able to take you twice during my journey here at Lewis. Your class is one of my favorites and I did learn a couple of things here and there that I hope will help me along my journey after Lewis. I think the fact that you are passionate about writing and teaching is why your students are able to focus and have fun while learning. That is a fantastic quality to have!
