Kady Kim

UWRT 1103-012
Professor Rothwell
05/08/2016
Reflection Essay

From the beginning of my semester of University writing 1103 to the end in

May, I can proudly say that my writing has changed tremendously. This change is
shown through this portfolio and by each individual project that we have been
required to work with. In the beginning of my portfolio I compared my writing to a
plant and how it grows and changes throughout its stages. In this stage of my
writing it is in the middle stages of growing. I would say that its completely finished
but I would say that its grown a lot since the beginning of the semester. As listed in
the course description of this class I feel as though I have met an adequate amount
of the things that were to be accomplished as a result of taking this course.
The first goal listed is Develop strategies for detailed planning of a writing
situation. I interpreted as being able to look at a prompt or start of writing
something and knowing how to start planning the writing or essay itself. I believe I
have met this goal because when I think of writing I think of the different ways that I
have learned to start out an essay. One of them is mentioned a lot in this portfolio
and is quite resourceful, is the zero draft. Often times I find that I am stressed out
and confused as to where to begin my essay. With the zero draft there is no
pressure of it even being close to what a first draft were to look like. There really is

no outline to the zero draft and so therefore relieves a lot of the stress that is
involved in beginning a large project. This is also one of my favorite strategies to
start writing an essay.
Create finished documents and hone an ability to analyze the strengths and
weaknesses of those documents was another point to the accomplishments of
1103. I relate to this in that when I used to look back at an essay and try to find out
what was wrong with it, it didnt help. This was because I kept looking for the glaring
errors that would take a lot of points off if I didnt fix it. Although this was something
obvious to look for in an essay it wasnt helping the overall composition of my
essays. Often times when I looked at in the writing class I would look for something
that I remember to be quite annoying to me or something that I didnt feel good
about. By this, I mean that there were certain parts to an essay that could use more
elaboration and organization. A way that this was fixed in the duration of this class
was when we did peer evaluations of the essays that we were writing. I began to
see the parts of the essay where it wasnt as strong as a different part.
As I have mentioned throughout this portfolio, one of my many strengths as a
writer is the ability to take details out of other things and give the details of it and
analyze it. This can be shown in the essay where we wrote what Deborah Brandt
thought about our narrative. One of the many things I enjoy is exactly what we were
supposed to do in that essay. I took specific examples from my narrative and
compared it to what Brandt was elaborating on and what she theorized about it.
Another example in which I had to do this exact thing was the piece that I wrote in
my liberal studies class. I was supposed to pull pieces in Hamlet in which
Shakespeare had used specific diction and with these, I would analyze and give an
interpretation of what it could have meant or sometimes what it would have meant.

A weakness that I feel as though I should improve in my writing is citing my

sources. This is something that I have gradually learned since high school but I
would like to improve on. I was never formally taught in high school and every time I
am required to do this, I feel like it is never the right thing or as it should be. It is
also very necessary that I learn how to do this in the near future because it is
something that I am without a doubt going to need for the rest of my writing career.
Another weakness that I have is that my writing sounds too forced. It does not
sound like I am being genuine about my writing. This would a useful skill because in
the even that I am writing a persuasive essay I do not want to sound like I dont
really care about what Im writing about. I find myself doing this when in essays I
am not allowed to use words like we, I, and us and you. Granted it is not the worst
thing but it does affect how an essay comes of and what it portrays.
In this class I am most proud of my problem based project because I felt like
it was one of the best essays I have written in a while. It really showed my strengths
and ability to research a topic and apply that to a concept. I also enjoyed learning
about something that affected me as well as the people around me. It also gave me
a reason as to why certain things happen to people when they are sleep deprived.
Because this was also a problem that affects me, I was able to really dig deep when
researching and even found solutions for myself in my sleeping habits. Overall it
was an entertaining problem to learn about and I can say that I would definitely go
back to research this topic in the future. In this project I was also really proud of the
way I structured my essay and the way I utilized my transitions well.
My inquiry process to a certain problem is first of all find the problem. I think
about if it even affects myself or the people around me. Then I assess how it affects
people in general. An easy way to think about a problem is to draw out all the

effects and what the problem can stem from. Another way to have a successful
inquiry project is to ask the people themselves and see if they consider it an actual
issue in their own lives. In some cases looking up things on the internet may or may
not work depending on the type of problem that it is. The reasoning behind this is
that who knows the problem better than the people it directly affects. For my
project specifically it helped to ask the people around me and college students in
general. Some things I have considered to include in this process in general is the
studies done that are on the internet from reliable sources such as well renowned
doctors or those that are experts in a specific subject.
I feel like writing is a big part of my career and the future because throughout
my college career I am going to have to write essays upon essays that could be in a
copious amount of subjects. Since I am a biology major many of these essays could
be included in the sciences. As for my future after college, I plan to go on to the premed track and for that there is a lot of research to be done. It would also involve
one of the problems that I have discussed, which is which type of voice to write in in
different situations. This is because most of them are going to be informative essays
and things of that nature. One other problem I would like to avoid in the future is to
not lose the ability to use different voices. I do not want to be so accustomed to a
certain type of writing that it will be difficult for me to write in a more free way of
writing. Although this is a big possibility I think I might make an effort to free write
every so often. Writing in free style well is a skill that I do not want to lose because
it also serves as a getaway for myself. It can also be a helpful skill outside of school
in things such as sending letters and just being literate in todays society.
My new goals that have resulted from taking this class is just to improve my
writing in areas like my grammar and like I mentioned earlier, knowing what type of

voice to use. Something that I want to happen as a result of getting better at writing
is for younger people to look up to my writing and to either use it as something
resourceful or could be considered as something useful. It would be nice to see that
taking all these writing classes truly paid off and altered my style of writing.