Reflecting more on my Writing Process

pmbbun. "Sleeping Puppy Puppy Sleep Dog Animal Pet Cute." 22/2/2014 via pixabay. CCO Public Domain.

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.