Dear Malcolm, Honestly, going into this semester, I expected this to be just another typical English class that

everyone was in just because we had to be. I was not envisioning taking anything from the class, but I surprised myself. The whole dynamic of the class changed who I am as a reader, writer, and thinker. I am used to a class setup where you just turn and assignment in and move on to the next thing. I have never been a part of a class where each assignment builds upon the next and you are constantly striving to improve your work. I would have to say the freewriting through daybook work and the assigned blog posts were probably my favorite activities. I think I enjoyed these so much because through the blog posts I was allowed to publicly share my opinion, whatever that may be, and express my stance on controversial issues in a very informal format. For example, when the video Why Education is so Important was shown, many students had quite a few differing opinions on the matter. Unfortunately, theres not enough class time to discuss each individuals opinion, but I felt like I could post on my blog and my voice was being heard. Aside from the blog posts, I really appreciated the time to do daybook work. Most of the time the daybook prompts addressed areas of my extended inquiry project that I needed to maul over, but never really occurred to me to do so. For example, when we were prompted to write about Who is involved in my topic? Who is impacted, I found this extremely helpful to my situation. At the time, I was struggling to figure out who the characters of my story were going to be and who was directly involved. Were the citizens of Malalas hometown relevant? Did their opinions play a role in this? Through

this freewrite, I was able to find the focus of my project. Nine times out of ten I found that the daybook work benefited my extended inquiry project immensely. Like I said before, I really was fond of how this one project built on itself throughout the entire semester. Looking back now it makes it really easy to see how I have changed in my writing and my thinking. The inquiry process itself started off a little rough with me. I struggle to make decisions most of the time, so being given the freedom to choose whatever I wanted seemed a little overwhelming to me. I was surprised at how my topic came to me. I knew as soon as a watched a video that had Malala in it that I wanted to evolve my project around her. I personally did not find the group discussions we had surrounding our topics to be very helpful. Most of the people in the group just nodded and agreed that everyones topic was jus fine without providing really any insightful feedback. I did, however, find the freewriting I did helpful to my inquiry process. It allowed me to keep addressing new questions about my topic that allowed me to keep developing and building my evidence and background knowledge. Looking back now, I can see how scattered and broad my topic proposal was. I would honestly consider this the most difficult part of the project for me, because it dealt with my biggest weakness as a writer. Most of the time, I feel like my writing is very disorganized and scattered and it showed through this assignment. At this point in time, I was not able to narrow my project down to one or two topics, so my topical proposal has a little bit of everything in it from who Malala is, what the Taliban is all about, education, and womens rights. Looking back now, I wish I could have forced myself to narrow down my topic because I feel like it would have greatly improved my topic proposal.

Going into my research presentation, I expected this to be the most difficult part of the assignment. I had never done a project where you literally explained and almost justified your sources. Im used to just slapping them on a works cited, most of the time never even having looked into them, and moving on. I enjoyed this element of the project mainly because I felt like I had more creative freedom. I liked that I was able to create a presentation, rather than just a regular paper discussing my sources. I think I may have struggled with this assignment in the beginning because I couldnt really see what the point of this section of the project was. I knew that I was displaying all my research but I couldnt quite see just yet how that would impact my project. Looking back at it now, this is when my project really took a turn for the better. Until this point my project had only focused on Malala versus the Taliban. The research I had found up to this point only showed the Taliban as Malalas only opposition. The research presentation forced me to delve deeper into my topic, which caused me to find that Malala may not have been quite as popular as I thought. This discovery changed the entire direction of my project and even my own personal feelings about my topic. Overall, I would consider my research presentation to be the assignment that I am most proud of. I put a lot of effort into not only the research side of the assignment but also into the presentation of my ideas as well. The Extended Inquiry Project is really the element where I saw myself change drastically as a writer. I liked the idea of my writing never being done. I was constantly editing and improving on what I already had. This also allowed me to keep finding new information on my topic. The feedback that was provided after each assignment really helped me to figure out what I was doing well, what I needed to tweak, and what my

direction would be for the next part of the assignment. While the instructor feedback was helpful, I did not find the peer review to be very constructive. My peer reviewer provided comments about how good my paper was but she never provided any criticism or ideas to what might need to be changed or improved. For me personally, I like to hear the positive and the negative, so I didnt find the peer review to really make an impact on my assignment. From my first draft to my second draft is where I see a lot of change in my writing style. I start to introduce my sources and explain where the information is coming from. My topic also begins to become more concentrated and focused. I realized I was going to focus mainly on Malala and her daily struggle, what she is fighting for, and peoples reactions to her fight. From my second draft to my final draft is not where I made the most physical changes, but I feel like its where everything started to come together for me. This is where I really understood the importance of introducing my sources and how to seamlessly insert them into my writing. The biggest help to me was the margin outline. At first, I did not want to complete the margin outline because I felt like it was extremely time consuming and I didnt really think it could benefit me at the point. However, after completing it I realized where I wanted to add information and I also separated some paragraphs, deleted others, and even changed the position of some entirely. After completing the margin outline, I realized I wanted to add more information about Malalas attack. In my second draft, I gave like three sentences about what happened to her and I really felt like I was cutting her struggle short. What happened to her is not something to be taken lightly and I wanted to make sure my reader understood that this was not just some normal gunshot wound where they bandaged her up and she went home. I also added information as to why some Pakistanis are not educated, aside

from just providing a bunch of statistics. Beginning the extended inquiry project, I could not possibly fathom why I would need to complete three different drafts, because I thought how is my project going to change that much. Seeing all of them now, it is apparent to me how the information did not change but my way of presenting it did. Before taking this class, writing was always something I struggled with. I was never proud of my work, and I honestly felt like I was just stumbling around in the dark, throwing things on paper just to meet a page requirement. I have always struggled with organizing my ideas in a cohesive manner. In the past, I would dread reading over my papers for fear of how unhappy I would be with their format. In this class, I did not get frustrated when things got challenging because there were always tools available for me to use while I worked through those challenges. For example, when I felt like my second draft was really disorganized, I was able to use the margin outline to clean it up and make sure all the information was structured. This class taught me to view writing completely differently. Now I ask questions about the topics that Im writing down, I ask myself What I want to know about my topic? , Why does my topic matter?, and Who is involved/ impacted by my topic?. While I do not feel like Im an amazing writer now, I do feel more confident in my writing and my ability to construct a well-crafted assignment. I think the biggest thing I have learned from this class this semester is that writing is a process. You cannot slap some information on paper and expect it to be good. Going forward, when I am confronted with a writing assignment, I want to follow the same process I did in this class. I would first freewrite about my topic so I can better understand the purpose and my goal for the assignment. Throughout my research, I will

constantly evaluate my sources and make sure they are credible and relevant to my topic. After writing I will complete outline to make sure my writing is presented in a cohesive, organized manner. Overall, I have surprised myself by how much I am taking away from this class and since writing does not only occur in English classes, I feel as if this class has hugely benefited my college career and my future after that. Sincerely, MaKayla Stiffler