Reflecting More on My Writing Experiences

In this blog post, I will provide additional reflection on my writing from this semester by answering a series of questions.

Live Life Happy, "Everything in your life is a reflection of a choice you have made. If you want a different result, make a different choice." 04/14/13 via Flickr. Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike License.

1. What were the biggest challenges you faced this semester, overall?

Overall, my biggest challenges were time management and planning out my writing adequately. Managing my time through all of the planning and drafting stages was especially difficult, because I had never previously spent quite that much time on planning and drafting. For instance, blog posts earlier in the year that were meant to help me plan my writing, such as "QRGs: The Genre" for Project 1 and "Evaluation of Rhetorical Situations" for Project 2 took a lot of time, and forced me to work on something that I had not spent much time on previously. Because of my lack of previous experience in this respect, this process was especially difficult for me.

2. What did you learn this semester about your own time management, writing and editorial skills?

With regards to time management, I learned that I work better when I have long stretches of time to work on something, rather than small bits of time here and there. For me to get something done in a time effective manner, I often need to sit down for several hours to get something done. Because of this, my previous thoughts on time management from the beginning of the semester did not entirely work. I previously wrote, "I think my main goal in all of this will be to make good use of all of the free time I have, whether that's one hour between classes, or five hours at the end of the day. " The latter plan worked better for me, as I need relatively large amounts of time to complete my work. However, because I require these long stretches of time, I often procrastinate my work until I have an appropriately large amount of time to work on it.

This semester, I learned that my writing process does make me more of a sequential composer, but I got the opportunity to work even more on my planning and editorial skills. The deadlines each week forced me to spend roughly equal amounts of time on each part of the writing process, which was very beneficial for me. I learned that, in order for me to write effectively, the planning and editing stages of my writing are especially important. For instance, while writing my QRG, I was able to essentially copy and paste some of my writing from my planning into my draft, which really helped me organize my thoughts. This can be demonstrated by this bit of writing from my rough draft, which was taken partly from my annotated bibliography: "For instance, this paper published in Science proposes a series of ethical guidelines that the authors strongly encourage for any further research involving this gene-editing technology."

3. What do you know about the concept of 'genre'? Explain how understanding this concept is central to being a more effective writer.

This semester I feel that I learned a significant amount about the importance of genre to any type of writing. The conventions of a particular genre really determine a lot about what the purpose, audience, and outline of any piece of text is going to look like. This is especially important to determine because, even if you have good ideas that back your argument, the argument can become ineffective if it doesn't follow the guidelines of that genre. I learned this relatively early on in this semester, when we were working with QRGs, a genre I was previously unfamiliar with. However, by listing out the conventions of the genre in "QRGs: The Genre," I feel that I was able to more effectively incorporate its conventions in my own writing. I demonstrated this realization in the reflection on this blog post, in which I wrote, "This really helped me realize that there are many different parts of the QRG that I have to focus on in my own writing in order to effectively use this genre."

4. What skills from this course might you use and/or develop further in the next few years of college coursework?

I will use a lot of the writing and analytical skills I developed in this course. One thing I will definitely use is the planning process that this class made me accustomed to. For instance, with project 2, I found the planning especially useful. The blog post "Developing a Research Question" helped me begin my research, and the following posts encouraged me to analyze the cultural context, purpose, and audience of a text in depth. These research and analysis skills will help me analyze texts critically in the future, regardless of whether it's an English class or a science class.

In addition, analyzing the credibility of sources will be especially useful throughout college and my career. This class helped me pay special attention to the credibility of sources, and I found myself noticing things about these sources that I would not have noticed otherwise. For instance, in "Evaluation of General Sources," I wrote, "However, it does seem to demonstrate a slight bias towards the side of the debate that claims that the event was not as controversial as it is made out to be." This analysis proved to be useful in my paper, as it demonstrates how credibility might be affected my bias. This skill will prove to be very useful in the future.

5. What was your most effective moment from this semester in 109H?

My most effective moment from this semester might have occurred when I was drafting my QRG. At first, I was nervous to begin writing in a genre that I had not known about previously. However, when I sat down and began to write it, I found that I was able to complete it in a timely manner due to all of my previous planning. I knew the conventions of the genre because of former research, and I had plenty of research to choose from because of my annotated bibliography. In this case, all of the planning really came in handy as I began to write this QRG.

6. What was your least effective moment from this semester in 109H?

My least effective moment from this semester occurred when I was constructing my draft for project 3. I don't think I had adequately planned this draft out, as I ended up writing out all of the information in a way similar to an academic essay. As I was trying to write a blog post, this was not entirely effective. While it did allow me to get all of my ideas out onto paper, I think more planning and outlining would have been more effective in this case.