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.

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Truly Inspired
Jessica Benoit

In order to inspire someone, you must encourage them to put forth greater effort. I believe that my peers in this class have truly inspired me. They have showed me that as long as you are trying, you will always succeed. IceCreamMan stated, “I eventually grew to hate the article so I decided to write about my gripes with how she depicts dealing with a different culture. This was a task I thought I could accomplish and for the most part I almost did.” By saying this, IceCreamMan showed me that even if you are not the least bit interested in a topic, you can still find a way to write about it. Another quote that inspired me was written by TheFlyingScotsman. He said, “After writing this paper I think I got a much better sense of what kind of writer I am.” I am jealous that he has accomplished this because I am still struggling with what kind of a writer I am. Hopefully, the more writing I do, the more I will discover about myself.

An additional quote that inspired me came from Atshekleton. “I feel that I am not only growing as a writer but also as a person. I think I might be in a better place for figuring out “who I am” as opposed to where I was after the last paper. That is a very big deal because the topic of discussion, lately, has been about Steph has been trying to improve us as people as well as writers. I’m excited to see where things go with the unit four paper because it pertains directly to this.” He is saying that writing helps one discover who they are. Writing gives us a better sense of belonging. This was touching to me that one could possibly look this deeply into writing.

Our class consists of a variety of people, which means we have a variety of writers. Each class member is struggling with different issues, and some of the same issues. For starters, Andy is dealing with a situation that does not affect me. He states, “I love to talk a lot, and when I write all the words in my head come out, and it's a lot of them. I like to give essays human qualities, even if it's supposed to be an official argumentative document, and I feel like this hurts me.” I am nothing like this. Words do not come flowing out of my head, instead I must sit for hours searching for the right words. “On this second paper I noticed how you have trouble incorporating both facts and your own opinions in your papers. You are passionate and opinionated on a lot, however it is imperative to incorporate facts as well so you whole paper just isn’t your opinion on a particular subject. In order to achieve this you could try using more quotes or toning down how much you say of what you think.” This quote was written by Ksweets. This sentence is the complete opposite of me. Instead, I always include a lot of facts in my papers, but sometimes struggle with sharing my own personal opinion.

Many of the other students are stressing about similar issues as myself. For example, John? specified, “I also learned that it is not acceptable to use an author’s first name in formal writing. I also saw that I was frequently using the word “it”, which took away from the fluency of my paper and was a huge distraction.” These are two issues that College Writing helped me to perfect. I am now constantly checking everything I write for mistakes like this. I also related to Peter when he said, “My problem was not necessarily the claims that I made however, the weak organization of the paper. I simply stated a bunch of misconstrued facts that served to confuse my audience.” I could not have said it any better. This was exactly my problem in the Unit Two paper. Peter and myself also tried to fix this problem in the same manner.

We both continued to rewrite our papers, and with the help of Steph’s feedback, we both finally organized our papers in a way that is pleasant to the reader. Esco discussed, “I also learned that it is very important to have direct quotes from the author that one is writing about. Not only is it important to include the quotes, insert them into the proper place in the essay and citing it correctly, making sure there is enough detail and support to back up the quote. Also to make sure that the quote is direct to the point or issue in the claim that you are trying to address.” This is also something that the Unit Two paper taught me. In my first draft, I simply listed a bunch of quotes that I thought would back up my claim. I was wrong. I soon realized that you must first introduce the quote, and then continue to give information that shows how the quote supports the claim.

Reading the class’s reflection letters has taught me a lot about the class, both as a whole, and as individuals. Although we are all different in so many ways, we still struggle with many of the same concepts on a daily basis. I am proud to say that this class showed me a lot about who I am, and who I want to be.