Class Activity With Jessica and Ray

This is in response to Jessica and Ray's activity at the beginning of class last week.
Without any hesitation, I started writing about what I desire - simple enough. I didn't consider writing about the definition of desire or what it means to me. I didn't feel any pressure at all to write during the first half of the activity, and I enjoyed having the freedom to write about the way I feel.
The second half of the activity, however, was a different story. I looked at the quote and thought, "what does this mean?"Between the confusion and having a time constraint, I just randomly took words from the quote and tried to create a meaning out of different thoughts going through my mind.
I didn't know what to think about my writing until Julie raised the question, "what is our task assignment?" Both parts of the activity no doubt encouraged us to write, and both resulted in different writing styles. Still, I think it's important to note that I would have written a completely different response to both parts of the activity if I had a specific assignment. For example, the leaders might ask, "what does desire mean to you?" or "what is the meaning behind this quote?" I didn't know our task assignment (not to say that we had or needed one in particular), so I just wrote about anything that came to mind.
Great activity, Jessica and Ray =~) You really made me think about some important issues in composition and teaching.