Reflection on Open Letter Draft

Reviewing someone’s letter that is directed to you is like getting mail and sending it back with notes because it wasn’t good enough.  Anyhow, I ended up peer editing Austin See’s open letter and Michaela Webb’s open letter.  Now it is time to revise my final English 109H project.

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In my letter, I built the story of my growth as a writer.  I showed where I was and where I have gotten to now.  However, the story needs more argumentation and supporting facts.  I will need to rearrange my letter so that it builds on itself.  I will also need to make sure that the examples and quotes I include are not just thrown in randomly but have a purpose.  However, I do have some analysis of what genre is and how to adapt to new writing situations which shows my ability to think about my writing and what I’ve learned this year.

I used my most effective and least effective moments of the year as chances to really analyze and explain how I have grown.  I still need to work on connecting these with what I have learned to show a clear progression. 

I specifically referenced and hyperlinked to blog posts and project feedback.  I also summarized things from my own projects and project guides.  I may consider adding more hyperlinking and direct quoting if it not does detract from what I am trying to say.  I have probably enough facts, I just need to make sure each has a purpose and has an explanation as to its importance.

Both of my effective and ineffective moment have an explanation as to why I ran into those successes or failures, whether referencing what I experienced from the semester or pointing back to my writing style from high school. 

I did mention specific writing terms such as genre, revision, and planning.  However, I will need to make sure I have used these effectively as this really shows my growth as a writer.  I may also be able to go more in-depth on what I have learned about audience and purpose, or the rhetorical situation.

Draft of Open Letter

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I have a lot of work to do organize my thoughts.  I may need to find a common thread or a main point in paper to help tie it all together.  Would this be beneficial?  The lack of a "thesis" makes it also difficult to compose an introduction and conclusion.  What did you do for a thesis that drove the rest of your paper?

Here is the draft of my open letter.

Reflecting More on My Writing Experiences

From overwhelming deadlines with 17 assignments to receiving high scores on a project you slayed over for hours, this semester has taught me much.

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1.      My biggest challenges this semester were adapting to new writing situations.  For much of my high school career I had mastered and perfected the academic essay always focusing on my teacher as my audience.  My purpose was always presenting my opinion and analysis in a clear and effective way.  When we were asked in Project 2 to conduct a rhetorical analysis that also served as an example to new freshman, I was unsure how to effectively perform this and quickly reverted to the purpose I was comfortable with.  I deviated from the purpose that was proposed in the prompt and therefore my draft was well written but did not answer accomplish the task at hand.  I also was afraid that the way I approached an unfamiliar situation would be wrong, so instead of trying my best to match the prompt, I simply wrote what I was comfortable with.  I came to find that the process of trying different techniques with new writing situations was so beneficial to learning how to adapt.

2.      I learned that I still have major tendencies to procrastinate even when I project is broken down into many deadlines.  I would often wait till Friday night or Saturday to begin the deadlines forcing me to have to turn in assignments past the deadline.  However, I did learn that on the weeks I did not procrastinate, the deadlines seemed more manageable and I did not feel overwhelmed by the amount of work as much.   I also learned that my projects improved so much after evaluating someone else piece.  My peer review skills were very critical, but it allowed me to see the small things that could really enhance a paper’s ability to answer the prompt.  This made me look for the same small things in my own paper.

3.      Genre is so much more than conventions.  Although these are what truly distinguish different genres, varying conventions can change the purpose and feel of a project.  This semester I was able to learn not only how to figure out the conventions of genres, but also figure out what effect they have on the piece and its audience.  Understanding this focused my papers and allowed me to maximize on the effectiveness of the genre.  To really play to an audience, you have to predict what they want and how the layout, tone, etc. will affect them.

4.      Understanding how to approach new writing situations has opened me up to knowing how to approach any new academic situation.  Whether I will be writing papers, creating presentations, conducting reports, I know that I have the tools to take on the assignment.  Ultimately, this has led me to become an independent student and eventually worker.  This class has essentially helped me in my skill of teaching myself.  I do not need someone to step me through each small step, but through research and maybe some peer review I can effectively accomplish any task presented me.

5.      My most effective moment this semester was during the prewriting process of Project 3.  When blogging Post 9.13 (Audience and Genre), I wrote that I wanted to target couples and new parents because “They may be infuriated with the testings as they have a very deep connection to babies and what child birth means.”  From the previous two projects, I had seen how much audience and purpose drove my papers, and thus I wanted to make sure that I chose a strong audience and purpose.  This blog post was the start of a process where I really began to consider the potential my paper had to affect this group and how I could influence them.  After two more blog posts of developing this idea (10.6 My Rhetorical Action Plan and 11.3 Analyzing My Genre), I had a strong, clear direction of where I wanted my paper to go.  This became the foundation for my best project.

6.      My least effective moment this semester was during the drafting process of Project 2.  The assignment asked that we show freshman in our field how to conduct a rhetorical analysis.  However, when writing my paper, I was unsure how to incorporate this audience into my paper and so I paid little attention to them.  When it came to writing my final draft, I tried to add my audience into the paper at the very end, but since I hadn’t gotten any feedback on this aspect I still didn’t know how to effectively incorporate my audience.  I ended up having many missed opportunities throughout my paper to have more of an impact on my audience.  It also hindered the clarity of my paper, as stated by my professor, “For your readers, this might seem a bit of out the blue” (Project 2 comments).

Revisiting My Writing Process

As we near the end of the semester, it’s exciting to look back at everything that I’ve accomplished.  But more than just reviewing the 59 blog posts and 3 major projects, it’s also intriguing to see how I have grown as a writer.  Both in my writing process and in my time management, I find things that I improved on and others that I refused to change.

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I began the year by classifying myself as a “procrastinator” but that “my reasons for working under pressure stem from my quality as a ‘heavy planner.’  Although, nothing ends up on paper, I make bullet points, maps, and outlines in my head and envision my paper all in intangible thoughts” (Blog Post 1.10).  This course, in a figurative sense, forced me to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) weeks before the project was due.

My inevitable procrastination did not stop me from waiting until Friday night to begin that week’s deadline; however, this did not stop me from putting many hours of work into the blog posts, or essentially the planning process.  And this style worked, as my blog posts didn’t have writing masterpieces, just tangible thoughts.

This process even eliminated the need for being a heavy reviser. Even when Sean asked us to throw a piece of writing away and start over, I didn’t feel the need because I had put so much thought into the planning process that my rough drafts came out more like finals draft that had been reviewed and refined.  I did not use my new intro paragraph from Blog Post 8.5.

This new process will definitely continue and improve throughout my college career.  I might not have the weekly deadlines in the future to keep me accountable for this, but I will find a way to work on assignments weekly.  Not only did this style significantly better my writing, but I always felt in control throughout the process.  I never felt as though the project was too overwhelming to get done or that the time is too short that I would just throw something together.

I’ve proved to myself that there is a better way than procrastinating till the last minute and doing all my planning in my head.  In the future, I will not have as many papers but more presentations.  I am good at winging speeches, but I’ve seen how much planning out from day 1 can really enhance my project.