This past summer I attended a writing workshop at Savannah College of Art and Design's Atlanta location, Ivy Writing Hall; a quaint two story house colored brick red with green trimmings made of wood. The hundred year old structure seems out of place next to busy Ponce de Leon Avenue surrounded by modern apartments and skyscrapers, yet once stepping onto the front porch I forget about the leftward view of rushing cars heading to their next appointment. I was embraced into a new setting, a new world; Ivy Writing Hall became a refuge.

It was a week long session with eight hour days sat with eight other strangers all with a common goal: to become a better writer. These are one of the pluses of going to a workshop because more than likely the people attending there want to be there, they want to enhance their skills, and they want to learn. One more thing people who attend these workshops would like is revision. From my point of view workshops are like sparknotes for experiences. They are short enough for them to get to the point, but not so long you forget what you learned in the beginning. It refreshes you on the basics and then extends on the knowledge you didn't know in a timely matter. An example of this would be we practiced poetry on Monday then had Multimedia writing on Friday. Because you had 8 hours of practice on that one subject per day you're able to learn a lot on what you can on that day.

Another reason I would recommend workshops is there are smaller groups of people in them making it easier for people to make connections with the students around them as well as the teachers. Not only are the people around you there they are also all interested in the same thing you are and as it is a workshop it's in everyone's interest to be better at the particular craft their interested in. The smaller groups allow you to make more conversations and bounce each others off a piece you are trying to make that work better. Such as during our editing period, one of the girl was having a hard time figuring out what else to write in her non-fiction piece the rest of the class were all able to give her feedback because of its limited amount of people and she was able to build off of it.

Then my final reason for recommending a workshop is that smaller groups allw for people to get to know each other better due to your extended time together. It makes sense because you are spending 60 plus hours with these people and they are already interested in something that already consumes a part of their mind enough that they were willing to pay for an experience and give their time to. An example of this during the Ivy Writing Hall Workshop would be when we made podcasts in seperate groups. We discussed what are topic would be for almost three hours and we had a great time discussing it and were excited for it. If this was in one of my regular classes we would have maybe talked for ten minutes then divided our workload equally then do what we needed.

These elements along with great people make workshops wonderful experiences. Particularly because they are created to make you better, introduce you to new people and provide life-lasting experiences. So if there is an offer available to you then go for it. It's worth it.