Reflection on Open Letter Draft

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In this blog I will be talking about the revision process in the letter writing. I revised Isaak's and Swati's letters.

I saw how my peers organized their letters and that it was okay to make my paragraphs a little longer than I initially had them. It also gave me a good idea of how to improve upon my transitions. I felt that my own letter was a little bit more formal than Isaak's but I also threw in a bit of informality and humor, things that my peers could relate to.

Did I demonstrate an ability to think about my writing and myself as a writer?

Looking at others' writing helped compare what kind of writing I have been doing. Reading the way others transitioned their ideas make me think about how I can improve my own transitions and format my letter more properly. I figured out that I can use larger paragraphs than I was originally using. It also made me recognize that it would be a good idea to use quotes from some of the blogs I was talking about in my letter. There were also some grammar things that I figured out I needed to fix by reading other letters as well as reading over peer review.

Did I provide analysis of my experiences, writing assignments, or concepts you have learned?

I talked about how certain blogs and tasks in class assisted me in working on my time management, my planning process, and my condensing of my writing. I also talked about how it has shaped my overall thinking not just in my English class but in my other classes. It is also a learning process so my organization will continue to evolve and mold to how I need it to fix my schedule.

Did you provide concrete examples from your own writing (either quotes from your writing or rich descriptions of your writing process)?

I used quotes as well as a description about my new pre planning writing process that has evolved from blog assignments. The quote was from my very first blog post telling about how I was a "Heavy Reviser" and the detailed steps were also what we went over in class and what I experienced in my writing process.

Did you explain why you made certain choices and whether those choices were effective?

I talked about my mind set coming into college with my writing process and how it had to change and these were the biggest changes that I made due to Bottai's planning and assignments.

Draft of Open Letter

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On this post, I will be attaching a link to the draft of my open letter. It will go into talking about how this class has helped me become a better writer, thinker and planner.

To those of you viewing this, it is still a draft and needs to be reread a few times, but it is to get the overall idea of where I am going with the writing and that what I am saying makes sense and that overall it is well organized. I have always had trouble with bringing the final product together after thinking out my ideas for the first time so I hope it is not too bad! Despite the homework, I did enjoy this class and I feel that I did learn a lot. It was a big time commitment but it forced me to get my act together early on in the game and create a schedule and plan that worked best for me which is the most important thing.

Reflecting more on my Writing Process

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In this blog post, I will be doing more reflecting on the class as a whole and what I really got out of it. It was a challenge, but it was a learning experience in many ways.

1) What were the biggest challenges I faced this semester, overall?

The biggest challenge I faced was limiting how much I could write. I am one that likes to over explain ideas, so trying just to get the main points out without the extra fluff was a bit of a challenge for me. The blogging genre forced me to say what I wanted in a quick, concise manner.

Another challenge for me was time management. This class had a lot of writing homework and I had to work little bits of the homework into my schedule throughout the week so that I was hopefully not doing the whole thing Saturday evening. I had to think about my other classes and what homework they gave as well. In the beginning of the semester I had told myself that I would become more organized with my time, and it started out well in the begging but became harder to maintain as the year went on.

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

I know that I need to space out the time that I write my projects. Looking at the drafts at different points in time helped me find more of the errors not just in my grammar, but my organization. I had to plan into my homework time to get even one or two blog posts done each day so that I was not swamped at the end of the week with a lot of homework.

I learned that making an outline helps with the drafting process. I have a better idea going into it what main points I want to hit so that I don't end up rambling on and losing track of my organization. This preplanning process was key to my organization. But as I worked on my drafts, it also helped to keep referring to the outline so I can remember what points I am trying to make. It helps from getting lost in the research of the topic I am studying.

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

Better understanding a genre helps as the writer understand who I am writing for and in what context. This helps guide the language and what kind of information is important to include within the work of literature, whatever kind of genre it may be. By knowing my genre, I can better analyze my audience, purpose and context. I start out more organized and have more well thought out ideas because I know what kind of overall message I want to send the reader home with.

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

I think my better practice of using concise language will help with any kind of future paper. And now, I have a better idea of how to start my writing process. There is a lot more pre- thought to writing than I was initially doing. Knowing these things to begin with will help me having to avoid making more changes in the drafting process.

This class also helped me better analyze readings. Learning how to find the main points in articles will help me better analyze and understand any articles I will have to read in the future. In science, I will probably have to start reading other scientific works and learn from them. I can pick up more information and even learn to better read between the lines. I am not sure exactly what the future has in store for me, but knowing how to better break down readings will help my overall comprehension of the topic(s) I am reading about.

5) What was my most effective moment from this semester in 109H?

The most effective moment I had this year was learning how to do research. Google is a vast search engine and learning how to sort through results and knowing what key words to use has helped me find more the sites that I was looking for. Even in this semester I have used this skill in other classes to help for research papers.

6) What was my least effective moment from this semester in 109H?

The least effective moments were probably in doing extra writing in blog posts that I could have learned by just doing a reading or annotating my sources. It was helpful to be asked the questions, but the need to go over and analyze in detail the questions was not quite as necessary. It took time away from actually working on my final projects.

Revisiting my Writing Process

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In this blog post I will be reflecting my writing process in the beginning of the year and how it had evolved over the semester. I will also look at how I wanted my writing process to become and if I met up to my own goals or not.

In blog post 1.10, it seemed that I classified myself as more of a heavy revisor where I did very little planning, would write a rough draft and just make a lot of changes into what I perceived to be my final draft. My goal was that maybe I would include more pre planning in my process of writing. By doing this, my draft would be more of what I want out of my final copy without the need to make so many revisions or even end up rewriting it. 

I would have to say that I have made improvements in my writing process to help meet my goal. I have been doing an outline of the points that I want to cover in my written work, no matter what it was, and I believe that it has helped with my draft work.  With the outline, I know exactly what points I want to make and what the most efficient way to make that point is. But even with this outline process, I still have to make a lot of revisions on the drafts. I think this can be because once I continue to reread what I write, I end up not liking what I initially write. 

Pertaining to my schedule analysis, one of the points I wanted to work on was spacing out the time I work on my blogging and project assignments. I did not do this very well. I tried to make sure that I worked on some blogging throughout the week, but the assignments that were due the next day always took priority to the blogging that was due Saturday evening. So I then I always tended to work on the blogging on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I still believe that it is good to space out your time to be more efficient so that you are not cramming to get it all done at once. But making that a reality has been hard. 

In the future, I want to continue to work on my time management. In improving this, I can start by writing down more of what I have to do and really analyzing how much time I have each day to do homework in a realistic manner. What I didn't do has much was organize my English homework around the homework for my other classes. But at the time, I also was not aware at what other homework I had for my other classes. This means that my homework schedule will have to be modified as the year progresses. This is something that I can work on for my next semester schedule. I can use my planner more as well. This can have me make sure I am getting everything I need to done not just for the evening, but by being able to get ahead as well.

In the next 3 or so years of college I will continue to find new strategies that will help improve my time management. There will be some trial and error, but the best thing right now is that I would consider myself more of a planner as well as a revisor with my writing. I know what kinds of information I need to find out before even thinking about what I need to write. With a clearer goal in mind of where I want to get with my paper, I can better clean up my writing.