Midterm Reflection

     My writing group met in the Atkins Library at 10am on Tuesday morning for our mid-term assignment. We were pretty lost at first. We asked around to other groups, some told us to look for a short story but avoid books, while others said to look for a poster or something like that. Eventually, we saw the newspaper section on the second floor of the library and decided that it would be a good place to find something. We each grabbed a paper and looked for a while.  We found an article in the Charlotte Observer on the city of Belmont creating a “bicycle culture”. A link to the article is here.This article immediately stuck out to us, for various reasons. 

     Getting a photocopy of the article proved to be more challenging than what we anticipated. There were several technical malfunctions with the copiers we were trying to use. Luckily, the librarians at the library were nice enough to help us out.

                Once we finally got that out of the way, we found a quiet spot and did our writing beside the text. This wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be once we got going. I actually was able to write a lot. That really surprised me.     

     The article said that in 1991 Belmont became the first city in North Carolina to adopt New Urbanism-a neotraditional zoning in order to measure growth and development.  This adaptation included measures like creating many sidewalks throughout the city.  All of this was in an attempt to create a “bike-friendly city”. Basically, the city of Belmont was on a big health kick, and made many changes to adapt to this new way of life.

     I was interested in the length that the city of Belmont went to create a certain “culture”. Our culture is essentially, who we are. However, we have a role in creating a big part of our culture. It’s up to us to decide who we’re going to be. I thought about the lengths we often go in order to improve our own culture; sometimes these lengths are more extreme then others. Just like how the city of Belmont strived to create a “bike-culture”, we strive for our own sense of culture and a definition of who we are.

     I believe that one aspect of our culture involves our writing and writing processes. We all have our own, individualistic “cultures” when it comes to our writings. This can be made up of different places, events, or people that have had an impact on our writing. Our Literacy Narratives for example, describe one event that we seem to think has had a significant impact on our writing. That assignment-along with this semester-has made me realize certain events of my life, and their impact on my writing, and culture as a whole.