Midyette 1

Hannah Midyette
Professor Olivia Rines
UWRT1101
April 19, 2015
Final Reflection
Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the
unknown -George Shinn. Before this class I never learned how to write a proper essay.
In high school we were expected to write five paragraph essays and only turn in our first
draft. So when I found out that in order to graduate from college I needed to take required
writing courses, you could say I was very unhappy. I dreaded the thought of a college
level essay because I knew I didnt have the skills. UWRT1101 has been transformative.
By expanding on items in my portfolio and my experiences in the classroom, Ill explain
to you how stepping into the unknown has helped me grow as a writer.
On the first day the class was assigned a letter to Olivia in which we were to tell
her about ourselves as a writer and as a student. You can find my letter in the first tab of
my portfolio. Being honest, I let her know that the thought of this class intimidated me
and that Ive been known to procrastinate. Her feedback was helpful by letting me know
that she wanted her students to succeed and if there was anything I needed help with she
would be there. This has been true throughout the semester, especially for the bigger
assignments. One of my favorite parts of this class has been keeping up with my
Daybook. Every day at the beginning of class, someone gets to choose a question out of
the If... book. All of these questions begin with If and we are asked to respond in our
journals for five minutes. I enjoyed Daybook more than any other activity because after

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we wrote, we would discuss our answers to the question, and I love learning about others
views and opinions on different subjects. My favorite Daybook response was on the
question If you could teach your children one lesson in life, what would it be and why?
This was interesting to me because some students already have children and they have
had experience being a parent while others of us have not. My response to this specific
question is in the section of my portfolio titled Daybook.
While Daybooks were fun, that wasnt the only thing we did in class. In-class
assignments ranged from group work, to peer review, to seminars. Im glad that most of
the time we got to work with other people because focusing on a task is difficult for me
when Im alone. Two of my favorite in-class assignments were watching the TED video
and reading Body Ritual among the Nacerima. Watching the video and taking field
notes on The Danger of a Single Story was an intriguing experience because
Chimamanda Adichie spoke about her experience growing up in a country that gets
stereotyped by many people around the world. However what she learned about other
places turned out to be stereotypes as well. This video showed the power of a single story
and how boxed in people can be if they do not at least try to learn others stories. My field
notes on The Danger of a Single Story can be found on my portfolio under the tab titled
In-Class Assignments. After we watched the video, we discussed our thoughts, which
caused people to speak on stereotypes they had experienced personally. I love learning
and discussing issues that are similar to the subject of Sociology; so I really enjoyed this
in-class experience. The video led up to us reading Body Rituals Among the Nacerima.
The article was written about American culture without specifically letting the reader
know that it was. For example, the author states: In the hierarchy of

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magical practitioners, and below the medicine men in prestige, are specialists whose
designation is best translated as holy-mouth-men." (Miner). This sentence is speaking
about dentists, but the way it is written makes us think of an ancient, barbaric culture.
After reading, we discussed the article and then were told to write our own smaller
version on a ritual of our own culture. This can be challenging because if one has learned
stereotypes about their culture, their writing may be offensive. I wrote about New Years
Eve and how Americans celebrate the new year by counting down to midnight. My
writing on New Years Eve can be found on the In-Class Assignments tab of my
portfolio. Overall, my experience in the classroom has been pleasant and has taught me
many things about writing and our society.
I learned even more about writing and our society by completing the discussion
forums outside of class, even if they were my least favorite assignments for this class.
Nonetheless, they were important and taught me more about writing. Discussion forums
are online posts we made in response to either an article or video posted by our Professor.
After responding to her, we were also required to respond to a fellow classmates post.
The first discussion forum was Baxs writing on the definition of genre. This post can be
found with others in my portfolio under the tab titled Discussion Forums. My post
begins by saying While I was reading this, I got to page 42 and realized that there is a lot
of defining of words going on that I probably will not remember (Hannah). This is true.
I felt like a pile of complex definitions had been thrown at me like dodge balls and I
couldnt catch them. Fortunately, we discussed this forum in class with a PowerPoint and
definitions got a little clearer as time went on, and more forums were posted

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Genre was a main topic of discussion because writing a Genre Analysis was our
first major assignment. You can see the process I went through for this assignment under
the tab on my portfolio titled Genre Analysis. I chose to write about horror movies
since they are my favorite kind of movie. I began by writing a Genre Proposal that gives
general information on horror movies, summarizes two scholarly articles that I used to
back up my statements, and explains three examples of horror movies. This helped me
learn how to research for future assignments in college. My first draft spoke about horror
movies and what made them entertaining. Looking back now, I wasnt quite on topic
because I spoke more about the content of the movies than I did on what makes them a
genre. However during peer review, I didnt receive corrective feedback on this point, so
I thought what I was writing about was on point. I think many people in the class were
confused on the requirements for this essay. For my second draft, I changed a lot of the
sentence structure and wording because this is something that my peers noticed I
struggled with. I also tried to take out extra content like explaining the unnecessary
details of the story. When I received comments back from Olivia on my second draft, I
realized that my paper wasnt on the topic of genre. She states in her endnote Also,
when you were analyzing your examples, you were focusing too much on the information
presented in the genre and not enough on the aspects of the text that make it fit or not fit
the genre described. You should include a step-by-step breakdown of the framework of
the genre, including aspects such as discourse modes, features, communicative purpose
etc. I was missing a lot of information and in order to not fail this assignment, I decided
to re-write my entire essay. Instead of describing what makes a horror movie scary to
people, my final genre analysis clearly states the criteria a movie must fit in order to

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qualify as a horror movie. I kept the plots of my example movies in the essay, but also
explained why the common order of events in the plot mattered and how each part of the
story was important to the framework of a horror movie. I grew a lot as a writer while
going through the process of writing this essay by learning that unlike high school, my
first draft cant be my final draft. Change is progress and through change, you can
become your best.
Part of change is stepping out of ones comfort zone, and thats exactly what I had
to do when starting my micro-ethnography. Just like for our genre analysis, our class was
given discussion forums and in-class assignments to understand the process and purpose
of a micro-ethnography. The most important reading for this assignment was an article
titled The Concept of Discourse Community written by John Swales because the
purpose of our micro-ethnography was to discover if the community we chose to write
about qualified as a discourse community. Swales has six important characteristics on
which we based our decision. Before we could start writing, we had to choose a
community and then observe and interview that community. I had originally chosen
sororities as my community but never received a response from any of the sororities. I
went to Olivia, and she suggested the Starbucks on campus instead. Interviewing and
observing this community was difficult because I have a lot of social anxiety so talking to
new people doesnt come easily for me. But I gained enough courage to step out of my
comfort zone and complete the process. This was a big challenge and success for me even
if it might seem like a simple task to others. My first draft was a struggle because I wasnt
quite sure what to write about, but the Swales chart we completed in class helped me
focus on the important things. During the peer review, I learned that I could have

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written to my audience in a less confusing way. Some of my peers didnt quite understand
why some of the information I included in my paper was necessary, and looking back at
it, neither did I. Again, my sentence structure, wording, and information changed in my
second draft to fit the rubric more specifically. Olivias comments really helped me when
writing my final draft. She let me know that the structure of my essay wasnt working
and that I needed to incorporate more of my interviews and observations to back up my
statements. I didnt re-write my whole essay this time but I did cut information out, add
information in, and rearrange my first three paragraphs. To see the entire process of my
micro-ethnography, you can find more under the tab on my portfolio titled MicroEthnography which includes my PowerPoint presentation.
To quote John Heywood, A hard beginning maketh a good ending. Beginning
this course was difficult, and although I will never get to the point where writing becomes
my profession, this class has begun to change my views on writing. Ive learned that
revision can be a long process, but that it is necessary. This fact has changed me as a
writer. Instead of writing first drafts and stopping, I now know to continue the process
until I know that I have done my best. I am now confident in my abilities as a writer and
my abilities as a student, so Id say that even though I have more to learn, this is indeed a
good ending.

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Works Cited
Miner, Horace. Body Ritual among the Nacirema. American Anthropologist. 1956.
Print. April 2015.