Reflecting on My Writing Experiences

1. At the start of this course, I assumed that we would have to read several novels in very short fashion and then write traditional 5 page essays on them. I was enrolled last year in 109H during the school year, and the first week we had a 5 page essay due. I assumed this class would be a repeat of that.

2. The most important lessons I have learned are simple. As a reader, read over the text multiple times. I cannot count how many errors I have found when peer reviewing after reading several times, or the improved knowledge I gained from reading confusing sentences over a few times. As a writer, revise, revise, revise. The first copy is usually going to be crap, as good as it sounds in your head. It is important to revise after receiving feedback from peers.

3. Having assignments that required us to narrow our thinking down and brainstorm as writers definitely helped in this category. Without the required assignments in between the drafts and the final projects, I feel my writing would not have improved as much, at all.

4. Peer-reviewing was one of the best parts of this course. I learned a lot about my own writing from my peers, and I hope that they learned a lot from me as well. I tried to use constructive criticism as much as possible and praise where it was needed.

5. I never looked much at the discussions tab, but I can say that my instructor was one of the most helpful and understanding professors I have ever had. The individual conversation was great and extremely helpful in completing this class. (So helpful that it even convinced me to write a teacher review for the first time). =]

6. I kept to myself for this class mostly. My parents were very busy moving over the past few weeks and my friends, well, who really cares about papers over the summer if it's not necessary for them?

7. For each project, I took the feedback I received from my peers and instructors and revised my drafts where I saw fit. I then would have my sister or someone read it over one more time and catch any glaring errors or areas for improvement. After that was all done, I added pictures, made the format clean and crisp, and hit publish.

8. Another one of my favorite aspects of this class: the use of different genres throughout the course. I really enjoyed not writing standard 5-paragraph essays all month. It was fun and exciting to do the QRG, as well as the analysis, even though that is not my forte.

9. Never signed up for 109H during the 16-week semester. I would take that back in a heartbeat. I ended up with a W after dropping past the deadline. I would re-do this 5 week class any day.

10. College writing is a big part of my life now. As I will be involved with it for the next 3 years, it is important that I learned valuable lessons from this class and can apply them to my future classes. After college as well, I feel that I will be better prepared to tackle business writing from the lessons I learned in this course.

11. The single biggest thing I learned during this course is that one draft is never enough. I learned so much from the revision process because I was forced to do it, however, I enjoyed doing it. I have never been required to complete that many revision activities, and I feel that it turned me into a better writer overall.

12. I knew I wasn't the best, at all. The beginning of the course reinforced the idea that I was a procrastinator, as I had an enrollment issue and technically procrastinated on a week's worth of homework (that was not fun). Throughout the course, however, I learned that I wasn't that bad after all, and that writing wasn't always an uphill challenge.

13. The second project was my least favorite, and it is because I am so used to writing persuasive papers or informative essays. Having to write what the author was thinking and feeling was very challenging for me and I still do not feel as if I did it correctly.

14. I feel that I am successful in writing essays that develop analyses with evidence drawn from the text, as well as practicing researching, reading, writing, and revision strategies. To go along with that, I feel that I am successful in creating multiple, meaningful revisions of writings, and using the conventions of scholarly research, analysis, and documentation. I do not feel that I am successful in analyzing texts through critical thinking, and deploying strategies to consider a text's purposes, audiences, etc.

Flickr. The Writing Process, May 17, 2010, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic