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

In my previous reflection essay, I stated two points that were evident from the first essay. First, I discussed how difficult it was for me to write about myself. This has not changed but it is not relevant in the second essay. Second, I talked about the improvement I have made with writing rhetorically. At the end of the first essay I found myself thinking harder about my audience and how others would perceive my work. In my second essay I found that I continued to struggle to write rhetorically because it has not become part of my thought process, but I feel that in the end of my essay I was able to produce a solid piece of work that would translate well to a variety of audiences.

In my second essay I analyzed Geeta Kothari’s short story, “If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?” I did not feel any particular affection for this piece of writing, but since I had to write about it, I decided to take a very unique viewpoint on the essay and then twist and turn the evidence from the story in order to fit my conclusion. My central idea for my essay on the writing was that immigrants should live in ghettos with people of the same descent in order to make their transition into a new life as seamless as possible. I do not agree with this viewpoint, which I liked because I had to think about this essay from a different point of view than my own in order to prove the point I had set out to establish.

Being able to warp pieces of information to strengthen a viewpoint is a skill that could be useful to me in the future. I am currently a kinesiology student and if I were to become a scientist, the research papers I would have to write rely heavily on citing many studies from a number of sources that build my argument. I feel I did a very effective job of using selected excerpts from Ms. Kothari’s story in order to back up my point.

I think that in the future I need to work on how I write rough drafts of essays. I try to write the rough draft to be the final copy, which means I spend a lot of time editing as I write. Instead of using this approach, I think I should create a very basic outline for the essay and then free write as much as I can. If I start going on a tangent, I should let it flow, if the grammar is not perfect, oh well, there will be plenty of time to revise later. My original draft of the second essay was written in the first style I talked about. The rough draft was a little over two pages and it did not give me much to work with. When I performed my rewrite, I free wrote seven pages of text and I was then able to whittle it down into something I was happy with. I think this technique will be much more helpful in the future.