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

[edit] Okay

People always say that the third time’s a charm, but this third reflection letter is the opposite. I feel like I do not want to write anymore. When I first reflected on my writing, I was happy with the direction I was heading. I started out with a good idea and ended up to be an excellent topic for my unit one essay, which I am so proud to have written. Later on came unit two and three, they were not my favorite assignments if I must say. The second assignment was all about interacting with a text chosen from the text-wrestling book. Last but not least, the research paper; it was the worst assignment ever because it was the most challenging.

Throughout the whole semester one thing that I liked doing in class was peer editing. By doing peer editing I would read, give suggestion to my classmates, and also recognize similar mistakes that I make. For example, Jessica mentions that she has a hard time with time sequencing, grammar and connection; one of Andy’s problems is with knowing the differences between a claim and a summary. These errors have caused us to lose a lot of points. Jessica and Andy did eliminate that “bad habit of theirs” as Jessica would say. Andy admits that the reason behind his improvements is because he did a rewrite and “took the teacher’s advice.” I am always up for rewrites, but number two was not worth rewriting. Where as Jessica chooses to write thinking of whom her audience might be. I should definitely take Jessica’s strategy because it would make my papers much better to read. When I am writing, I don’t think about my audience, I write based on what I am thinking, which is not always good.

After all of the mistakes that some of my classmates and I have made, I finally found some things that I do not have to worry about. In Unit two, both authors Anzaldua and Kothari wrote about their cultures and for some of my peers it was hard interacting with either author; because they cannot put themselves in Kothari or Anzaldua’s shoes. Where as I can imagine what the author’s are writing about because my culture is similar to theirs. The other thing I don’t have a problem with is writing about myself unlike Dan because I love to tell people about me. My classmates’ struggles help me grow as a writer because I have one less thing to worry about, my story might be completely different than the ones who grew up in America.

After reading everybody’s reflection two, I have to say that Dan inspired me to “create a very basic outline for the essay and then free write as much as I can.” This is important when it comes to writing because it is always better to have more than fewer. If more you can always cut something out where as you would have to add and think more if you come up short with words. I am also inspired by how Dave connected his life story to Anzaldua’s piece so perfectly. I hope to be able to make a connection that good something if I ever have an assignment like this again.