Writing is probably one of my biggest flaws. I’m not the best writer, and I feel like there’s a lot of improvement that needs to be done in my writing. I would love to improve more as a writer because it’s very important. It’s a way to express ourselves and put all our thoughts on a piece of paper. Throughout the semester, although there’s room for improvement, I feel like I reached some of my goals, like the course learning outcomes. 

   Our first assignment in this class was the Resume and Cover Letter. This was a very interesting assignment because it was the first time I was writing my own resume. This assignment covers Course learning objective number 1. I was able to compare and contrast everyone’s resume to mine, and see what things I needed to add to my resume, and I was able to give others advice on how to make their resume better. 

   Our second assignment was Rhetorical Analysis. In this assignment, I wrote about an article that was titled “Are You Beach Ready?” I Knew right away that this was a topic that I wanted to write about. Women are faced with the idea that we all have to follow these unrealistic beauty standards. Everyone believes that we have to have a specific body to be “beach ready” and beautiful. This assignment covers course learning objectives  number 6, formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing. In my essay, I wrote “as  a result, these types of Ads are very inconsiderate of people’s feelings. The way the Ad tries to give a message to the public by trying to shame and bring down the audience. Instead of being so hurtful to each other, we should all learn to be kind and spread body positivity”  That sentence explained the stance and the purpose of my essay. I was able to express the meaning behind the article/ ad and how the author’s message behind the Ad was very hurtful to a few people, even if that wasn’t the author’s intentions. 

   Our third assignment  was the literature review. This assignment covered course learning objective number 8, strengthen your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources) and number 7, practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects. For this assignment, we had to use the CCNY Library Database. It was a bit difficult for me because it was actually the first time I used the school Library for any research project. It was also my first time using the APA format. I definitely learned a lot of useful information in this project. The topic that I had to research about was genetic engineering on humans. I admit, it was very difficult to find any useful information about this topic since we always wanted to talk about how it affected humans and nothing else. In the essay, I was in charge of the introduction, so I really didn’t use many details like the rest of my group since I was only introducing the topic and how it’s done, but I learned how to use APA format to cite the evidence that I had.

     A few course learning objectives that I feel like I could work more on was number 2 “enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment”, and number 3 “negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation.” For example, I feel like I could have explained myself more in the Rhetorical Analysis. Looking back at it now, I see that I was repeating myself a lot in that essay. I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to write and explain, but I couldn’t find the correct words. I had a hard time drafting the literature review assignment. It was very difficult finding articles on the library database to find the correct articles to explain what I wanted to say. 

     One of my favorite assignments this semester was creating the Children’s book and presenting it. It was the first time I ever did something like this for a class, so I was really looking forward to it. Since my group and I decided to write a children’s book, we developed and engaged in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes( course learning 4) and engaged in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond (course learning 5). In this project, we tried to put in a little bit of everyone’s ideas. It was a bit challenging because of course we weren’t able to put everything in, but we wanted the everyones thoughts and ideas to shine in this project. A big obstacle that I think we faced throughout this project was time. We all had different schedules, and it was hard planning stuff together when some were busy or weren’t able to have time to work together. Other than that, I think our project came out wonderful and I’m very proud of how we all worked together to create such a great book. 

     As a result, this semester taught me a lot of useful information. Although there’s many areas that I need a lot of help with, this class helped me improve more as a writer and thinker. I was able to write essays where I had to compose arguments, research papers, and even write a book. I’m very proud of my work this semester and I can’t wait to grow more as a writer.