Ryan OConnor Mr. Borrero ENGL 1102 26 April 2012 Final Reflective Letter Dear Mr.

Borrero I honestly cannot think of one word that can describe my experiences in this writing class this semester. To say my writing style and habits were challenged would be an understatement. Looking back through the pieces of writings I have produced, I definitely feel a sense of accomplishment when examining how much work I have created. But as I read through the papers, I cant help but feel analytical. I can easily tell how my actions and decisions throughout the semester contributed and impacted the proceeding piece of work. I feel that the purpose of this letter is to point out why I wrote the way I wrote, the positive and negative decisions I made, the assignments that altered my writing, and how I feel about my writing as the semester comes to a close. As I entered into this class, I came with a depressed, upset, being let down kind of mindset because of how my English 1101 class turned out. Even after I worked harder than I have ever worked in my life, I still left the class with just a C. It felt like all the work I produced was pointless, I was confident about my works yet apparently they were not satisfactory. On the first day of this class I felt that whatever I wrote it was inevitably going to be terrible. Although the first day of this class went pretty well because we had the Whats in the Box? activity, I had this

feeling that you were only trying to make a good first impression on your students while allowing them to get a sense of perspective and inquiry. I actually figured out what exactly inquiry was because I analyzed things that happened before we were supposed to write the journal. I noticed the wooden sounds as the box was being taken out and used evidence to prove my argument as to why I thought something wooden was in the box. After the class, I felt like I had a fairly good understanding of what inquiry was and I felt like this class could be a fresh start for me. A few classes later, I had to write the journal named Whose Story is it Anyways? I realized after I completed the journal that I wanted to explore the perspective I was taking in the journal for the whole semester. This definitely had an impact on what I chose to write about in regards to my concept. The stance I was taking in the journal was trying to defend myself (or the character I was representing) from a crime that I did not commit. I was the only person that believed what I was saying. Unfortunately, I only had about ten minutes to write this journal. I honestly could have written several pages on the topic because it was so fascinating. This perspective ended up being the exact same perspective I was going to take in my concept. It was not an easy task choosing an event/concept though. I originally chose a World War II battle for my event which ended up having not much purpose, not a strong concept, and very flat characters. I wrote a Proposal for this event thinking that I could legitimately create a concept out of the event, but after the first group conference we conducted this semester, I realized I could not continue with the event. So I picked a very controversial event instead, an event that completely

related to the third journal entry that I loved so much. I had a lot of confidence with the event and I felt that I would also have fun writing about my concept. As the class progressed, we began to go to the library to research our historical events. I decided upfront that I wanted to find online sources first which was a mistake because when I wanted some book sources I had to go to the library on my own time. I still managed to create a very factual Historical Inquiry Paper even when I was somewhat behind because of my event change. I think that I had a ton of experience writing research papers going into this one. Although I conducted my research and Annotated Bibliographies probably a week or two before I wrote the paper, I ended up writing the whole Historical Inquiry Paper the day before the first draft was due. It did take me pretty much all day to write the paper, but I was actually surprised at how well I wrote it in a small amount of time. Unfortunately, this led to me doing the exact same thing for many drafts this semester. The whole class submitted their first drafts on a forum and I was the very first one to post my draft in the forum. Although the forums purpose was to receive comments on the draft, a good number of students ending up not getting comments from anyone while still commenting on another persons draft. I did not receive any comments and therefore peer review was not very helpful. The Historical Inquiry Paper that I produced was a fairly well written paper, but it did not tie in with my concept very well. My endnotes described the context for my concept but barely talked about the concept. At the time that I turned that paper in for the first time, I do not think I was entirely sure what a concept was. With all the small assignments within the Concept Board section of the semester-

long project, I started to get an understanding of what a concept was and I was actually pretty confident in my concept when writing The Pitch. Fortunately, I was able to make revisions to my Historical Inquiry Paper and my pitch because I apparently did not really know what my concept was. To understand why I wrote what I wrote for the second half of the semester, I have to explain the decisions I made that impacted my writing. For the first half of the semester, the only big decision I made in regards to my writing was writing the Historical Inquiry Paper on the last day. For the second half of the semester, I made huge decisions that completely changed why I wrote what I wrote. The midterm conference that we had let me know exactly what I needed to change to possibly get an A or a B. I noticed two major things I needed to work on: participating in class discussions and to develop my concept a lot more. My concept is supposed to be evident in pretty much all the work I produced, so it was probably the most important aspect of my writing I could work on. I began the second semester trying to ask more questions in class to possibly help move class discussions along. Overall, I feel like I did just slightly better at participating in the second semester than the first. Through the small workshops for the concept board project section, I got a very good sense of what my book was going to be like. I actually had confidence in pitching my idea to an actual company. I think the Domain Analysis and the Glogster Collage really helped me gain an understanding of the setting in which my book would take place. I felt that setting was one of the most important aspects in my book because it contextualizes everything I did after it. For example, the Character Profiles were a lot easier to complete; (although somewhat

frustrating) I was able to write numerous things because understanding the setting helped spark a bunch of ideas. Moving forward, constructing the pitch essay was fairly difficult. I had to make major decisions about the positioning of my ideas in the paper, how much I wanted to give away, and I had to figure out what the purpose of my concept was. I did not feel confident in the first draft because I thought it was not clear enough, it did not incorporate enough research, and I just felt like I could have worded a lot of things differently. The group conference in which we discussed the final draft of the pitch brought forth a plethora of things I could fix with my pitch things that I would not have caught otherwise. So after the conference I dedicated a whole day to revising my pitch essay. I addressed all the issues that were pointed out while also learning how I should have written the paper. Doing the revisions not only helped make my pitch a lot stronger but I feel that if I had to write another pitch in the future, it would be almost perfect on the first try. The E-Portfolio was my chance to showcase the best work I have produced this semester. I tried to always update it once a week during the semester so that I would not have to do it all on the last day. I feel extremely proud of the things in my portfolio but there are a couple things that I should note about it. Firstly, the proposal for my event/concept as a whole is not included because by the time I had changed my concept, I immediately started on my Historical Inquiry Paper and I just did not have the time to do it. As I described earlier, the peer review was not very helpful for me. The second peer review the class did for the pitch essay was not really something I could write down on a piece of paper, as we just conversed about

what each other could work on. The only other aspect of my E-Portfolio that might be somewhat of an issue would be the Character Profiles. I only completed two of them instead of three because my concept was centered around only two characters. I tried to go into as much detail as I could within the profiles by using research to back up most of the information. I also tried to make it interesting by writing diary entries for the character while incorporating things that actually happened within the entries. For the additional work section, I was actually planning to write a page or two of what my book that I describe in my pitch would actually be like. That would have been very interesting but unfortunately I came up with the idea too late in the semester that it would be impossible to write and finish all the other necessary work in my E-Portfolio. So I decided to include the first proposal in the section just because it was one of the earliest works in the semester and it can be compared to my most recent writings to show how I have grown as a writer over the semester. Since I really wanted to reflect on the pieces of writing I have produced, I went back through all the work and read everything that I wrote over again. Although it is hard to say that I have grown as a writer this semester because I feel like I wrote the first assignment of the semester, the Introduction Letter, very well. So I actually compared my recent writings to the first proposal I wrote because the proposal was a little more academic/formal than the Introduction Letter. As I analyzed the first proposal, the writing style is fairly similar to how it is now, but I feel like there was not really a purpose for why I wanted to explore the particular event. I feel like this is the main aspect of my writing that changes throughout the

semester. My writing became increasingly more purposeful and I actually felt more engaged with my writing instead of writing vague statements as the semester progressed. The other aspect of my writing that I noticed a change in was the acknowledgement of my audience in my later papers. Because I knew who my audience was, I wanted to write in a way that would appeal to them. For the pitch essay, I tried to sell my concept to the Executives while also trying to sell my book to the audience that I specified in my Audience Profile. I treated the pitch like I was actually trying to promote my product and sell it to an advertising corporation. So as this semester comes to a close, I feel that I had accomplished something great. I learned how to give intense purpose to my writing, explore multiple perspectives to understand an event or idea better, pitch a product that I feel confident about, and write in a tone that would be appealing to my audience. I cannot stress enough how confident I feel in the work that I have showcased in my E-Portfolio. Compared to my English class last semester, I feel that I participated much more in this class and therefore learned a lot more and grew in so many aspects of my writing.

Sincerely,

Ryan OConnor