This class has been incredibly rigorous and has required me to push boundaries and expand on my writing capabilities. It was incredibly challenging meeting all the learning objectives but the guidance from the Professor helped pushed me to strive to hit those objectives. 

With this class being asynchronous I was under the impression that it would be more difficult to navigate myself through the class, while reading the syllabus I did panic a little. Fortunately, this class has allowed me to explore different modes of research, majority of the assignments require the usage of sources and sometimes google just doesn’t have a wide range of options. The school library has a plethora of books and I was introduced to the reliance of the online library that I now have through the OP-ED assignment I was given. Speaking of the usage of sources, we were tasked with a critical analysis paper that in some notes resemble a research paper and with research papers I tend to have a hard time “formulating and articulating a stance through” my writing, but I believed I did surprisingly well on the critical analysis paper and when rereading it my stance wasn’t shadowing the purpose of the piece very much, in some aspects but overall the purpose of the paper was fulfilled and my opinions didn’t overshadow much. When writing papers focused on analyzing someone’s else’s work I never fully understood what it meant to analyze, my first resort was to summarize and explain but it is more than that, it’s explaining why the author wrote it in the way that they did? Did they achieve their purpose? How did they achieve it? The how is what to be focused on at times. When using sources in your writing you have to proper integrate them and through the semester I tried working on integrating quotations from my sources within my writing as smoothly as possible. When it’s out into a sentence properly it makes the essay flow better and that’s something I worked on and achieved. My goal at the beginning of this semester was to better my analytical skills & I feel as though I did that. In addition to the critical analysis essay we were given discussion posts on readings assigned and they usually had questions in regards to the genre, medium, and rhetorical situations of said readings. These assignments aided in my understanding of what medium even meant, I didn’t know what a medium was prior unfortunately but I asked one of my peers and they explained it to me. Overall, when choosing sources that tie back into your essay you have to identify what the rhetorical situation of that source is or you risk it not flowing with your paper and that could also cause confusion. 

Throughout this semester, we worked on an opinion editorial and i struggled with that assignment so heavily. I was conflicted on what to write about, then i was afraid i wasn’t making any sense but when i handed in my draft my classmate gave me some edits & feedback on it. She explained things to me in a way where i understood and you can tell the difference when you read both my draft & my final draft.  

I have not been as attentive this semester and that made me miss out on the peer reviewing of others work. I did some peer review but majority of them I missed out on and I was unable to engage in the collaborative aspects of the writing process. 

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