Final Reflective Letter:
Dear Professor Knudson,
As a writer, taking this class was the best thing to happen to me. Before this class I was not confident about my writing and it was really hard for me to get other people to understand what I was trying to say. I think the most important work that boosted my confidence was the Literacy Memoir because I was able to go back and reread the comments which were very helpful and make changes accordingly. The comments helped me tie together the past present and the future into my writing. The comments have also helped me develop my strength which is being more detailed in my writing and it has helped me identify a new weakness that I didn't know I had. The comments have helped me realize that my grammar needs some work. I never realized this before but I need to go back and relearn how to use my commas and other grammatical punctuation because the way I have been using it in the past is not right. The biggest challenge I faced this semester was keeping up with the reading. I have learned to deal with this by developing the skill of skimming. I have learned that I don't have to read every little detail in the passage but I do have to read the important parts. This has saved me time and has made the readings a lot easier for me to understand. Also writing the in class writings have helped me look at the writings in a different way because the discussions in class allowed me to see what other people thought while reading compared to the opinions I thought of. Over the course of the semester I have gotten better at taking into consideration as to editors have to say about my work and changing their edits to make it my own. Before I would have my dad reread over my work and have him tell me exactly what to write but with the peer review I have been able to put my own voice into my edits. I believe that the text that has undergone the most revisions is my Literacy Memoir. It was the piece of writing that needed the most work and the one that I worked the hardest on. I took into consideration your thoughts about how I need to connect the writing to history and I was able to connect the writing to the development of technology. I also wanted you to look at my reflection on the Tweets because I think I gave the best feedback in that one. I was able to give my positive and negative opinions about the topics and have thought of ideas that could make the project even better. Overall throughout this semester I have learned a lot about myself and my writing. I have been able to see what caused me to lose my love for reading and writing while I have also learned to love writing again (as you can see with my five hundred word letter.) This class has given me a better feel of what I need to work on and in what areas I am doing well in. It has given me more confidence and not made me feel like my writing is "awkward."
Sincerely,
Katie Szczepkowski
As a writer, taking this class was the best thing to happen to me. Before this class I was not confident about my writing and it was really hard for me to get other people to understand what I was trying to say. I think the most important work that boosted my confidence was the Literacy Memoir because I was able to go back and reread the comments which were very helpful and make changes accordingly. The comments helped me tie together the past present and the future into my writing. The comments have also helped me develop my strength which is being more detailed in my writing and it has helped me identify a new weakness that I didn't know I had. The comments have helped me realize that my grammar needs some work. I never realized this before but I need to go back and relearn how to use my commas and other grammatical punctuation because the way I have been using it in the past is not right. The biggest challenge I faced this semester was keeping up with the reading. I have learned to deal with this by developing the skill of skimming. I have learned that I don't have to read every little detail in the passage but I do have to read the important parts. This has saved me time and has made the readings a lot easier for me to understand. Also writing the in class writings have helped me look at the writings in a different way because the discussions in class allowed me to see what other people thought while reading compared to the opinions I thought of. Over the course of the semester I have gotten better at taking into consideration as to editors have to say about my work and changing their edits to make it my own. Before I would have my dad reread over my work and have him tell me exactly what to write but with the peer review I have been able to put my own voice into my edits. I believe that the text that has undergone the most revisions is my Literacy Memoir. It was the piece of writing that needed the most work and the one that I worked the hardest on. I took into consideration your thoughts about how I need to connect the writing to history and I was able to connect the writing to the development of technology. I also wanted you to look at my reflection on the Tweets because I think I gave the best feedback in that one. I was able to give my positive and negative opinions about the topics and have thought of ideas that could make the project even better. Overall throughout this semester I have learned a lot about myself and my writing. I have been able to see what caused me to lose my love for reading and writing while I have also learned to love writing again (as you can see with my five hundred word letter.) This class has given me a better feel of what I need to work on and in what areas I am doing well in. It has given me more confidence and not made me feel like my writing is "awkward."
Sincerely,
Katie Szczepkowski