Reflecting More On My Writing Experiences

Buck, "The Future Next Exit" 07/15/09 via Flickr, CC0 Public Domain

In this post I touch more on my experience in this course, as well as how I think this course has helped me find myself as a writer and as a student.

1. The biggest challenges I faced in this course were finding ways to make time for the large amount of coursework demanded in this class. I could have probably completed the actual drafts/projects without much stress or many problems, honestly. It was the deadlines with 5 blog posts, 2 read/reply/reflects, and a rough draft due that I could not keep up. Not keeping up would get me even more stressed out, which would, in turn, cause me to get further and further behind. Don't get me wrong, I completely understand why the blog posts were assigned, and they did help me gain skills as a writer, I just personally couldn't always handle all that was assigned.

2. I learned that my time-management, writing, and editing skills were not as great as I thought they were before this class. Editing was something that I didn't even realize I struggled with, but when I would go to revise my pieces, I wouldn't even know where to start. Peer review definitely helped this issue, and I can now see that taking a fresh, outside perspective and analyzing my piece for my rhetorical situation can really help transform and polish a piece.

3. Each differing genre demands a writer to essentially reinvent themselves, while maintaining their own unique voice and style as a writer. In high school, there was never much chance to experiment with genres, to understand how to transform a single topic from a QRG to an explanation of a rhetorical analysis to a buzzfeed article. In fact, we really only focused on one genre at a time, if we even shifted away from rhetorical analysis all year. Learning about different genres, different settings for writing, helped to expand my variety and flexibility as a writer.

4. Even though this is the only writing/english course I need to complete in my major, the projects we did will be very helpful for my future as a student and ultimately a neuroscientist. I learned how to find relevant research in my topic, how to turn that research into a well-rounded paper for an audience to read (in many different genres), how to properly cite the piece, and how to revise a piece until it is essentially publishable in my field. All skills that will definitely come in handy as I do research in my field.

5. My most effective moment from this semester was Project 3. I completed most if not all of the blog posts, and actually understood how to work in a genre I was unfamiliar with. I started from scratch and used techniques from this class, such as analyzing my rhetorical situation, until I understood my genre, audience, context, and purpose, and wrote my piece as such. My grade for this project definitely reflected this, as I got an 87, the highest of all of my final drafts for this class.

6. My least effective moment from this semester was Project 1. I missed several blog posts, and didn't take much time to try to understand the genre of the QRG. Although, in my defense, I thought I understood it at the time. My QRG seemed fine to me, but I ended up with a D on my final draft, so the amount of effort I put in was adequately represented, I suppose.