Final reflection

When I first started taking this class I was skeptical about how I was going to like it. I’ve never been much of a research writer. The only other real experience I had with this was writing my senior exit paper my junior year of high school and I did not do well on it. The writing aspect wasn’t the only alarming part of this class. I was also worried about the blog, in class peer editing, the daybook, and the several papers that seemed to pile up all at once.

 I have never cared for online writing because it feels awkward and I have a hard time keeping up with it. Inevitably, this ended up really hurting my grade for the first half of the semester. But, you have to do what you have to do and I ended up coming around to it. Once we no longer had to post every class day and only had to post important papers or reflections, it became less tedious and painful than previously. If I could have it my way, I would keep the blog strictly to papers and reflections. I think reflections throughout writing the paper could be a good idea as well so you can get vent or talk about concerns, frustrations or writing blocks you may be experiencing during the writing process.

The peer edits were a concern of mine as well. It is hard for me to sit down and look at someone else’s paper and give them constructive criticism. At times I felt like I was negative and may have put my classmates down, unintentionally. When I was looking at their papers I would try and not be nitpicky about grammar and punctuation errors and focused on the bigger ideas. However, focusing on the bigger ideas was hard for me because at times I didn’t fully understand what we were supposed to be doing or how to do it correctly. This was very apparent in the visual analysis. I had completely misunderstood the assignment on a couple levels, so anything I did say to my editing group, could have potentially misguided them or was no use at all. While not all of the advice I received was profound, the comments that my group gave me were positive and made me feel more comfortable with my writing.

Dun dun dunnnnn, the day book. At the beginning of the semester I was very open to the idea. I thought it was interesting that we would start the day by analyzing quotes and get the gears in our brain going. Here is a picture of the

first day writing in my daybook. Everything is neat and organized. However, as the semester went on, it was no longer important to me for those reasons. The bulk of my first drafts of all my papers are in this book. All the adderal fueled thoughts that rushed over me are scribbled down in those pages. The day book fueled the fire that was to become the many papers I would be submitting by the end of this class. By the end of the semester, my writting looks more hectic. I write, scratch out, and repeat.

Now the bulk of the class, the writing. In the first week of class when we looked at the list of potential topics, I knew mine right away. I knew I was going to focus on charter schools. When you look at my exploratory proposal essay, I state that I want to focus on whether charters were better or worse than public school. I had ideas about interviewing CMS teachers in both charter and traditional public schools. I wanted to know how they felt about their jobs, who felt more rewarded, and what the students thought. This was all good and well but as I began to write each paper, getting closer and closer to the final argumentative essay I felt my topic changing. It wasn’t which is better, it became is the choice of charter schools hurting the public education system.

The visual analysis was the hardest paper I had to write. I was confused on where to begin, how to connect it all and writing the analysis of each picture itself, still haunts my dreams. When I look at the first draft of my visual analysis to what it became at the final submission there isn’t any resemblance. The only thing that did manage to stay the same were in fact the images. Those alone took me hours to find, and personally they weren’t that strong and I wasn’t entirely pleased with them. The easiest piece of this essay was breaking down the image and picking everything apart. Analyzing it proved to be far more difficult. I start with a very basic breakdown of every single piece of the pictures but it grew to be an analysis of the image as a whole. Getting feedback from Megan along the way and the encouragement to keep pushing formed my paper into what it became. Like I’ve said earlier, this was my weakest essay but turned into one I was not only comfortable with but proud of.

 

The annotated bibliography was another painstaking essay for me. It was tedious and long, much longer than it needed to be. However this was the most helpful essay I wrote. This made my final argumentative essay a breeze that hardly caused me a lick of stress or anxiety. I think this should be something that is taught in high school and becomes a forced part of the writing process. It truly does make life a lot easier. Analyzing the paper was a little difficult for me. I found myself analyzing the concepts in the paper rather than the writing itself. It wasn’t until the last minute before the papers were due that I sat down in my daybook and re wrote every analysis for each source.

 

            The Toulmin and Rogerian essay were some of my favorite. The Rogerian flowed easily for me. Because I knew I was going to be writing my final argumentative essay in this style, I tried to perfect it and make it  foul proof. The brainstorming day for the Rogerian was a good day for me. Fueled with my trusty adderal, I went into class and basically had the entire the done by the time I left. The notecards were very helpful in guiding me to the final draft. The Toulmin was a bit more challenging. Perhaps I didn’t understand the concept fully or maybe it just wasn’t as strong. The grade between the two was substantial showing I was obviously stronger in one rather than the other.

            The argumentative paper, what should have been the most daunting was the easiest paper for me to write. My peer editing classmates agreed when they told me they thought it was the strongest paper I had written all semester. Sitting with my annotated bibliography, drafts of other essays and notes scribbled down in my day book I was able to crank thing paper out in about an hour and a half. A personal best time for myself. It was a relief to get this paper done. Not only was it going to be the last academic paper of the semester but it showed me that every step and every paper we did this semester was to help with this one. While all the other papers were at times excruciating, they all lead up to this final step and made it a breeze. This was a very eye opening experience because it taught me that future academic papers don’t have to feel like pulling teeth, all you need are the write components and to have done the proper research.  

            All in all, I am leaving this class optimistic about future writing assignments. These tasks will no longer be daunting and painful as the once were. I leave feeling prepared and knowledgeable about what it takes to be prepared to write a paper and how you should take an extra moment to fully analyze anything before submitting it.