Final Reflection

Essay

Having finished this course, I can say that I accomplished more than I had originally anticipated. Coming into the class, I expected to learn more about the technical side of writing, especially for academic papers. In fairness, we did cover the basics, such as citations and the structure of a research paper. However, I wasn’t expecting to cover creative writing as much and as thoroughly as we did in the first month of classes. I’ve never been comfortable with creative writing. Most of my writing is academic and scientific, and I’m well-used to the conventions and techniques of those sorts of papers. Completing the first few free-writes was an interesting task for me, since I hadn’t written creatively in years. In addition, the course had us analyzing creative writing, as well, something I rarely do outside of class assignments. This fulfilled the first course expectation for me well beyond what I had anticipated doing. Now, more so than before this course, I feel comfortable reading and writing in at least a few genres on top of my usual academic reading and writing.

Another course expectation that I fulfilled was the third, which was about using and understanding rhetorical terms and strategies while writing and analyzing texts. Prior to this class, I had never heard of the rhetorical situation, and when I first learned it, I assumed it was just one of those required syllabus points I’d never actually have to use. However, I soon learned that the rhetorical situation worksheet was incredibly helpful for the research papers we had to do. It became so easy to sort through the information and gauge which sources would be helpful for each argument I had to make.

One course expectation I didn’t quite get by the end of this course, however, was the fourth, which was about the collaborative elements of the writing process. The class itself was fairly collaborative; most class time was dedicated to discussing readings and assignments as a group. However, when it came to the actual writing assignments, it was mostly done on our own. We had a few peer review sessions, in particular for the first and final papers, but I found these pretty unhelpful, a point which we as a class seemed to agree upon in our class discussion. We all felt that we were too inexperienced with writing to be able to critique others’ fairly, so our feedback was trivial and unhelpful for everyone involved. I do think, however, that it helped a bit when I discussed parts of my essay with my peers outside of class. I never had them proofread or edit, since that felt unhelpful, but simply talking through my points and ideas got me motivated to organize my work better and focus my points. I do believe that I still have to work on writing collaboratively, though, because I still don’t have the skills required to proofread and help others with their writing.

Overall, I think this was a much more fulfilling course than I anticipated. I feel as though I got a lot out of it, especially regarding the creative writing, and I believe that what I learned this semester will help me a lot down the line.