ePortfolio

Reflection

In high school, I wasn’t a very strong writer. I never really knew how to write a paper and didn’t know how to format it. I took AP classes and I never really got good grades on my papers and never really revised them either. I would write a first draft and have that be my final draft. That was probably not the smartest thing to do. If there’s one thing I learned from this class, it is to revise, revise, revise. “Write early, revise often” is what Dr. Kyburz always said. When I first entered the classroom of my College Writing I course, I was determined to become a better writer. I would learn how to edit my drafts, get them checked over, and learn how to format.

For me, the documentary summary project was my favorite to write about. It was very interesting to pick a documentary to watch and learn about. The documentary I chose was The Hunting Ground. This opened my eyes to a whole new concept that I never knew was a major issue. This paper was pretty difficult for me to write because I didn’t know how to format it and what to include and what not to include. Although, the fact that I chose an interesting topic to write about helped me. I feel that picking a topic that you are genuinely interested in makes it much more easier to write about than picking something you don’t have interest in. That’s what I often did in high school and probably the reason why I never did too well.

The microtheme was probably the hardest to write for me. It was tough to try to find a topic that I could easily write about. It had very specific requirements also. Once I settled on a topic, it was hard to come up with a specific question that addressed the prompt. The fact that it was limited to only one page was also very difficult. I feel it is harder to write shorter essays because you can only put so much information on one page. I kept on going over a page which was kind of frustrating because I didn't know what to take out and what to leave in. Revising it over and over however helped a lot.

Another writing project we were assigned was the Exploratory essay. This was basically a research paper on any topic that we want. Although, “5-10 pages” did kind of scare me, I was determined that this would be my best paper yet. Most people kept the same topic they did for their microtheme, but I decided to do something different that I would be more interested in. I did mine on animal captivity. I am very passionate in this topic and thought it would be easier for me to write about. My first draft seemed to be okay actually. It was better than any first draft I’ve ever written. After revising, I was actually proud of my work and what I came up with.

After the many (but not too many) assignments and papers of College Writing I, I feel like a better writer compared to how I was before. I never use to revise my papers or even look over them. This course has taught me that revision is one of the most important part of writing any paper.