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

October 06 Dearest Brian, You have learned a lot in your fist experience of writing a paper in college. The fact that you are learning is just great. I am proud of you. Some of the things that I have noticed you have learned, as well as improved throughout your rough drafts were content, grammar, word choice, and overall presentation. Perhaps the biggest leap and bound you made was in your content. As a writer in high school, you would write a rough draft, read it over and correct some minor grammatical errors and then hand it in. That just does not fly in college. I found yourself completely revamping your essay, so that the one you turned in for your original first draft was a completely different looking paper. I mean you basically had the same main tenant but the way you presented it was totally different. The paper was more focused and organized. The biggest problem with your writing before, and in earlier drafts was that you treated the paper more of a stream of consciousness than an organized work. You had basic ideas, but they were strewn between miscolanous ideas. One of your strengths in your writing is that you believe strongly in what you have to say, and in the final drafts of this paper, you were able to convey these ideas because of the organization of your thoughts. In this paper you took what was basically an I Love music statement, and were able to shape it up to tell everyone about your identity. Brian, lets be honest, your grammar is not a strong point of yours. And I also understand that you have never really liked grammar all that much because you believe that the rules of grammar step on the toes of creativity. However, in this paper I believed you learned that you needed to concede to the rules of grammar, not only for a grade, but so that your paper could be universally read by everyone, free of distractions. Although you might not hold it in the highest regard, without it you cannot transfer your thoughts to other people without the distraction and misinterpretation that bad grammar can bring. Finally, one thing that you clearly learned in your first paper for college writing was that word choice is the difference between what makes a writer a good writer, or a good writer a great writer. Word choice can not only make a paper interesting, and grasp the reader’s attention, but it can also make a statement much stronger, or even change an entire sentence’s meaning. By distinguishing the correct usage of words, you can change an entire feel of a paper. There were vast improvements in your word choice, especially from your final rough draft, go your final paper. Without the repeating of choice words, as well as a slight change in vocabulary in certain sections gave the paper a total facelift. Overall, from my prospective at least, it seems that you have made leaps and bonds on your first paper as a college student, and it looks as if you are eager to learn more things as the year progresses. Keep up the good work. Love,

Brian Donnelly --72.19.101.223 21:42, 5 December 2006 (EST)