This assignment was to write a reflection about the entire class as a guideline for the e-portfolio.
With the Final Reflection Assignment the theme of "cycles" comes in the form of an ending. At the end of every cycle of life one must reflect on the journey they've taken in order to prepare for the next.
Final Reflection:
When looking back at this semester of English 101 it’s hard not to reflect on how I’ve grown as a writer. The steps I’ve taken have proven to not only my teacher but to myself that I can be a strong writer. I believe I’ve taken great strides in developing my use of message, detail, and sentence structure. I believe these three things have pushed my writing to another level. While overall, I feel this semester of writing has been the best in my entire life, one essay that stands out particular is my personal narrative essay. This essay allowed me to do a lot of different things. First, I proved to myself that I could use sensory detail to tell an intriguing story about something as plain as eating at a fast food restaurant. This essay had a deep personal meaning and I am proud that I was able to open up like that and convey my raw emotions on paper. This is something I struggle with in real life, so it allowed me to break the ice a little bit. I enjoyed this essay the most because it allowed for the most creative space in writing. Other essays were either research based, or reflection based, and this essay allowed my writing process to work freely. What I still want to improve is my creative ability in writing essays like rhetorical analysis and reflection. I feel like having a strict prompt kills my spirit for creativity and I allow that to worsen my essays. This semester was a huge leap for me in terms of my strength of writing. Before this semester my writing could be described as lackluster and lazy. I really focused this semester and polished my writing into intelligent and fluid writings. What it took for me to learn how to do this was to make a writing system and trust in my ability to write. While maybe unconventional my writing is way above the level it was before this semester. One specific instance I can think of is the rhetorical analysis essay. I created an outline for this essay (something I hadn’t usually done) and then wrote a very inquisitive essay using a strong thesis and intelligent points. It came to me more natural then other rhetorical analysis essay I have written in the past. I would say another example of writing this semester that strengthened me as a writer was the blog. I’ve never done a blog before, so it was sort of a challenge to compose a different form of writing. I found that I could compose this using my writing process with no issues. I just had to tweak my process minorly. This along with several other new ways of composing such as a podcast and an e-portfolio were all new to me this semester and allowed me to grow and be able to compose writing on any platform. In conclusion English 101 taught me how to write in a manner of higher education, helped me grow in several aspects of my writing, and broadened my horizons on ways to write.