My first project was a This I Believe essay with my main thesis statement being I learned responsibility at a young age, and I needed to be responsible. Some sources that I used for this paper was other people’s essays so I could learn how to build up my own. And what also helped me throughout this was being able to read my peers essays and learn from them. Even having my peers read my essay and them giving me some criticism on my paper helped me out a lot in the process.
For my second project it was an ad analysis paper. I first found an ad that interested me and then after finding said ad I began to analyze it by seeing who its intended audience was and what it was trying to sell. My main thesis was mostly about how the author of the ad intended for it to be sold as the author wanted to sell the technology from a neutral standpoint and not from an opinionated one. what really helped me while I was writing this paper was whenever we did peer reviews in class since I was able to get some criticism on my writing as I had quite a few grammatical errors and spelling errors. It also helped me to see if I was getting my point across.
The last project was on fixed and growth mindsets and what my mindset was along with how to deal with failure. My question was how can failure help me to reach a growth mindset in college? My thesis statement was what can I do to grow from my fixed mindset. The sources helped me to expand my knowledge of the mindsets. I knew a bit of information from past classes, but the sources helped me to learn new information that I didn't even think about at all. It helped me to see how I could learn from my own writing as I was doing it from my sources. As I reread and rewatched my sources I found and picked up new bits of information. The peer review helped me to see my grammatical errors and if anything was worded weirdly.
I was able to learn how to respond to various rhetorical situations and audiences in my writing. Whenever I was writing for my Rhetorical ad analysis essay, I had to think about what the author of the ad intended and what audience he was writing for.
I learned how to use my writing for communication, learning, inquiry, and thinking. Whenever I was doing the final project, I would not have known what type of mindset I had if I had not done the quiz beforehand. Then from there I was able to read the sources and think back on my mindset so I could create my question. With my question now written out I was able to use my sources as a way to find my answer.
I was able to expand on knowledge of using sources in my writing. Whenever I had to write and use sources in that writing, I would only take parts of the sources and just stick them into my writing without thinking of what I really wanted to use from them. But while I was writing my final paper, I did the summary and response papers and that helped me to find the perfect quotes I want it to use. 1 quote that I had used in You Can Grow Your Brain.
I was able to learn new strategies on revising and editing. One thing that I didn't like when I wrote papers was having to read a lot of sources. But while doing my last paper I enjoyed reading my sources because of the summary and response papers. By being able to figure out what quotes I wanted to use throughout my paper I was able to write my papers quicker since I knew what points I wanted to make.
I even learned how to collaborate for my own personal writing. By getting positive feedback from the people around me in my class I was able to improve on my writing. Whenever we did peer reviews in class it helped me to expand my writing even further. Like during our second project on the add analysis when I was reading other people’s essays, I was able to find mistakes in my own paper. I saw how I would mostly write in a more opinionated tone rather than a neutral tone in the beginning of my paper. I would not have known that at first if I did not read my peers papers.
I was even able to get it more information on how to help my peers in editing. I learned that I forget to put commas and misspell complicated words a lot. But with the help of peer reviews, I can catch those mistakes quicker than it would have if I was reading over my own words. With that help that I get from my peers I'm able to score higher than I would have if I didn't get that help.
A strength that I feel that I have when I was writing all three of my essays is whenever I begin drafting my papers, I always have an idea of what I need to write. And then once I have that idea, I'm able to get down the idea on my paper and while it may not be finalized, and it may not be perfect I'm able to get my point across properly every time. But a misdirection that I always have is procrastination. I never begin my papers until the end of the night I never really feel creative and less so in the late hours, so I tend to become tired while writing my papers. Because of this sometimes I'll stay up all night writing papers when I should be asleep and what may end up happening, I end up not saving these ideas and I have to panic and try to remember what I wrote. It had happened one time I was finishing up my outline for a paper and I had forgotten to hit save and almost exited out of that paper until I remembered so I backtracked and saved it before losing all of my progress.
But in the end this class made me feel like I learned how to be more creative with my papers and with my essay skills. I was worried that there would be a lot of paper writing in this class and then I would be overwhelmed with how many essays I would have to do in the span of one semester, but I am glad that I took this class. My expectations for myself were pretty low but I was thoroughly surprised with how good I did in the class because it was easy to follow.
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