Critical Reflection: Missing Mother

I decided to write a column about mothers this week because Sunday is Mothers Day, and so it would be relevant and in the minds of my readers. I also decided to include the fact that Mothers Day falls on my 20th birthday as a way of linking my separation from her to the fact that I am maturing and yet still have difficulties being completely independent.

I thought about what in particular I wanted to write about mothers, and decided that it would not be interesting to simply read about how I feel about my own, and instead wanted to write about something that the reader would be able to relate to. The majority of people who look at the features on http://www.winol.co.uk/ are students at the University of Winchester, so I needed to make sure that I wrote about something that they in particular would be able to relate to. That is why I made the decision to write about how I have found becoming independent at university and moving away from my mother for the first time, as many other students at the university have had to do the same thing.

I decided to focus on the task of laundry because during my time here this seems to be the recurring chore that students find difficult. I also hoped that I would be able to make the column humorous by including examples of other students' attempts at laundry that I have experienced and that I found to be funny at the time.

Although I had a target audience in mind, I also tried to include things which people who are not students would be able to relate to, and hoped that I wrote the column in such a way that the examples would be funny even if the reader has never been in that situation themselves.

I have to admit that with this piece, with the exception of the title, I did not focus as much on literary devices. This was because I wanted to share my own experiences honestly, without being sidetracked by trying to make it more interesting or relatable than it was in reality. I felt that the only way for the piece to sound as honest as I wanted it to was to write completely honestly! And so, in terms of critical reflection there is actually not much to analyse!

I am extremely pleased with the finished column and hope that I succeeded in making it both humorous and relatable.