Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

Dear Jessica,

In high school, I always struggled with writing papers and found it very hard to put my thoughts and feelings into words. I recently received my first “real” college paper back, and took some time to look it over. This paper has taught me a lot about my own writing. It has showed me some of the concepts that I need to work on. My overall grade was [lower than I hoped]. I’m not too happy with this and therefore I’ve decided to rewrite the paper, hoping for better. I have noticed that my writing is still at the high school level, and needs some improvement. Now that I’m in college, I need to express my thoughts in a way that others can completely understand them. I also need to think about my audience, Who am I writing to? This will make a big impact on my writing. Another thing I need to think about is my point. What am I trying to say? What do I want the reader to walk away with? What do I want the reader to think about me, as a writer? We are always writing for a purpose. Whether it’s to help another person, or convince another person, or even just to entertain someone. What’s my purpose in this paper?

In particular, I’ve learned that I have a lot of bad habits that I need to work on like time sequencing, repetition, and the use of vocabulary. For example, I have a tendency of switching back and forth from past to present tense. Also, I tend to use certain words over and over. I think I need to work on expanding my vocabulary so that I can use a variety of words to better explain my thoughts. Now, my main concern is getting off track and moving further away from my point. I noticed that, in this paper, I don’t get to my point until the very end of my story. For my rewrite, I’m thinking about getting rid of the entire beginning of this paper. I spent a lot of time explaining my childhood. Now I do think this is important, but maybe not as important as I made it out to be. I think I might just touch base with these instances, rather than going into detail about them. I feel that this will give me more of a chance to prove my identity to the reader. I need to focus more on connecting my definition of identity to my experience. In my own head, it makes sense. But I need to think of it in a different light. I need to realize that the reader may not know anything about me. Also, they may not be able to relate to my experience in any way. I need to make my thoughts absolutely clear, and not leave the reader wondering what it is I was trying to say.

It’s obvious that this paper has taught me a lot about my own writing. With time, I hope to improve greatly on my writing skills. I’ve learned that writing is the best way to express your thoughts. Why bother expressing your thoughts if the reader can’t understand you? This is why I’m going to try my hardest to bring my writing up to the college level.