Reflecting More on My Writing Experiences

In this blog post I reflect more on my writing experiences from this semester and what I have learned about myself because of those experiences.

Bodin, Ulf. "Bench". September 9, 2013 via flickr.
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1. What were the biggest challenges you faced this semester, overall?

• Overall, the biggest challenges I've faced this semester would be learning to adapt to others' time schedules and learning to accept criticism from my peers. Most people liked to push their work back until the night it was due, so I had to adapt to constantly checking in order to find someone's blog to comment on. I've also primarily always reviewed my own work, so learning to accept others opinions was initially a challenge.

2. What did you learn this semester about your own time management, writing and editorial skills?

• This semester has shown me that I do not adapt well to others' time schedules. I am an individual that works much more effectively on her own timeline. I also learned that when I write I tend to deviate from the main point I am trying to make and I ramble instead.

3. What do you know about the concept of 'genre'? Explain how understanding this concept is central to being a more effective writer.

• The concept of 'genre' allows you to identify your audience and create your publishings in a way that suit their needs. By understanding what audience you are addressing you can more effectively suit their needs. Along with understanding their needs, you can more effectively deliver your point by writing in a style that appeals to them. For example, for Project 2 we were tasked with writing about an issue in our major. Our target audience was incoming freshmen in the field, so it was important to avoid jargon they wouldn't understand and to simplify complex ideas in a way that they would be able to understand.

4. What skills from this course might you use and/or develop further in the next few years of college coursework?

• I will further develop my abilities to adequately critique work and accept criticisms from others. I will also actively search for peers to review my work because I have found the process of peer review to be extremely helpful.

5. What was your most effective moment from this semester in 109H?

• This may be biased on my end, but I believe that my most effective moment was when I finally managed to have all of my other blog posts done aside from my draft before the week had even started. It was much less stressful being able to spend all week working on just the draft and not having to worry about doing the other blog posts.

6. What was your least effective moment from this semester in 109H?

• My least effective moment from this semester was when I spent six hours working on an annotated bibliography. This was back for one of the Project 1 deadlines before I realized that amount of effort was not necessary. I could've spent that time working on other parts of the deadline and could have applied more time to homework for my other classes.