Reflecting on My Writing Experiences

For this blog post I will answer 14 bulleted items on pages 251 and 252 in the Student's Guide.

Chensiyuan. "Lincoln memorial reflecting pool". 4 April 2007 via Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic, and 1.0 Generic 

Here are the aspects to reflect on my writing:

1. Your assumptions and ideas about writing before taking your first-year composition courses                                                                                                                                             Prior to beginning this course I thought I had a good understanding of what it takes to conquer an English course.  I will have to admit, the first three days of this course kicked my butt.  Instead of pouting on my bed, I matured into a hard-working individual and took it upon myself to acknowledge that I am taking an honors course in the summer.  Not that there is anything wrong with this, but with this title, comes more responsibility.  I took a good look in the mirror and told myself that I will get through this class by doing my best and not quitting.  So far, the speech I told myself has worked.  Doing my best and not quitting are two important qualities people should have.                                                                                                                                                            
2. The most important lessons you have learned as both a reader and a writer as a result of taking your first-year composition courses                                                                                 As a reader, I have learned from this course that in order to fully grasp the information in a text, you must not only carefully read it, but read it a few times.  Doing this will only help you understand the purpose of the text and have an easier explaining it if necessary.  As a writer, I have learned that practice, some planning, revision, and constant work will result in a better grade than procrastinating.  Although I do not personally procrastinate, many people in this world suffer from it and as a result do not succeed in a way that they envision.                                                                                                                                                                                          
3. The ways you brainstormed, narrowed down topic, and worked on thesis statements          By writing an original thesis statement and then usually sticking to my second draft of it, is the plan that I used when writing my projects.  Planning prior to writing them was an important step for me to even think of ways to approach what I will say.  As far as narrowing down the topic, I did this by already having a thesis statement in mind and then making sure that it was relative to an audience and how they would be represented in my projects.                                                                                                                                                                         
4. The peer-review process, including what you offered and what you received                         I thought the peer-review process was a beneficial process to completing each project.  Corrections from my peers was a necessary aspect to improving my projects.  Without this, I do not feel that I would change as much in my projects because I would be too kind to myself.  Seeing what I wrote in a different set of eyes helped me not only improve my revision, but my overall outlook to completing projects.                                                                                                                                                                
5. Individual or small-group conferences with your instructor                                                      The rubrics provided after each project was completed helped me realize what my mistakes were and how I can improve my writing in the future.  Also, videos in the beginning of the course helped me get a clearer idea of what was expected throughout this course.  Overall, some form of communication helped me in this course.                                                                                                                                                                
6. The discussions you had about your paper with people who were not in your class               By asking a parent to look over my completed projects, I was able to get another person to review my projects without having my advice by their side.  They could quietly fix any errors that were in my projects.  Having more than three reviewers helped me in a big way to improve my projects from my first drafts to my last.                                                                                                                                                                       
7. How you approached the revision process for each essay                                                         Reviewing the comments from my peers helped me formulate better methods on fixing the specific details that needed to be addressed in my projects.  Revising individual sections of my projects was the best way, I thought, on how to fix my projects in their entirety.                                                                                                                                                             
8. Your understanding of reading and writing in different genres                                               Reading and writing in different genres helped convince me that messages of a topic can still get across in any format that its written in.  Viewing different authors' texts in different settings helped me find the true essence of creating a useful and persuasive thesis statement.                                                                                                                                                                      
9. What you would do differently if you were to take your first-year composition courses again                                                                                                                                               The only knock that I have on myself is spending a bit more time planning out my projects to ensure that I do not have to over-do the revising.  Revision is important, but over-doing it can affect how you perceive your overall paper.  Thinking too much about one sentence can affect the overall flow of the project.  That's why more planning prior to writing can help reduce some of these issues.                                                                                                                                                                   
10. How college writing fits into your life now and how it will fit into your major and future career                                                                                                                                                College writing has helped me have a better understanding of how analyze sources and interpret them in a way that I can get the most amount of information out of them.  This can help me in the future as I will have to analyze different scientific texts and use them to help me write my thesis for my bachelor's degree.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  The following questions might help develop a thesis statement for my reflective essay:                      
11. What did you learn (from a specific writing assignment, from a specific experience, or from the semester as a whole)?                                                                                                     More than any other English course I have ever taken, this one has taught me how to formulate a thesis statement and keep in mind how I will successfully address the purpose of what I will write about and how an audience will be addressed.  Doing this is one of the most important parts to writing a text, as it sets up the rest of the text.  Without a clear thesis statement and how an audience is perceived, the text might not flow as well, let alone even make sense.                                                                                                                                                             
12. Did the choices you made, or writing experiences you had, reinforce something you already knew about yourself or about writing?                                                                         Researching a lot prior to starting my projects helped me a lot.  Surfing through many texts and choosing the best one can be a hard task to complete.  The only way to do it is to be patient and be able to make an effort to set your mind to it and complete it.  Without informative sources, the project itself will not be a thorough and may leave an audience feeling lost an uninformed throughout the project.                                                                                                                                                                 
13. If you did not gain as much from a particular project as you had hoped, what are the possible reasons for that and what might you do differently the next time?                           The good part about this question is that, in my opinion, I believe I have learned as much I needed to write a good enough project.  I put about the same amount of time into researching the topic I will write about for all of my projects.  As a result, I feel that I wrote longer, but more informative texts in this course.                                                                                                                                                                  
14. Think about the course objectives listed on your syllabus as you consider your success in the class.  What course objectives did you meet?  What objectives are you still working on?                                                                                                                                                   As far as the four objectives for this course go, I feel that I have addressed all of them in some way.  In terms of needing more practice for them, I believe that in the future I need to have more rhetorical awareness and a little more practice on conventions.  These are not major issues that I suffer from, but more practice with them will only help me improving as a reader and a writer.  The two objectives I believe I have met are critical thinking and composing and reflection and revision.