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Ellie Guerin

Ms. Kusinitz

Writing 104

20 November 2017

Final Reflection

Cool sweat drips down my forehead onto my Chromebook. What could I possibly write next? Typically

finding something to say is not hard for me, but writing recently is a challenge. Because of this block, I

scramble words onto the screen and the first draft is disastorous. Through learning the outcome of throughly

revising and editing to meet proper English conventions as well as properly changing the piece to completely

meet the needs of the rhetorical situation.

While writing my profile, I faced many challenges in meeting the needs of the genre. My thoughts and

ideas did not focus directly on my subject, but rather aspects of her life. Through my feedback, my peers and

Ms. Kusinitz lacked an understanding. For example, Ms. Kusinitz wrote, “I am unsure the focus related to her

here”(Guerin 1). To fix my lack of focus, I reviewed my research to determine which aspects of Ally, my

subject, I intended on displaying and what part of her character I wanted to be evident in the profile. By

completely focusing on Ally, it became easier to formulate a vision for the piece and what I desired the outcome

to be.

While writing my memoir, I found it difficult to stay within a tense. This is a standard rule of English,

but I struggled in following it. Initially I wrote, “I blinked and we were in the driveway”(Guerin 2). This was

edited to: “I blinked and we are in the driveway”(Guerin 3). Subtle changes such as tense completely affects

how the audience reacts to what they are reading. Tense changes decide whether a reader is in the moment or

reading a recollection of the moment, which in turn would not be a memoir. Memoirs take the reader into the
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moment and retell it as if they are there, so changes in tense make difference in comprehension and lack

consistency.

With writing, I use vocabulary that is more rigorous and challenged. Sometimes I place these words just

to enhance the vocabulary, but in some sentences in my memoir it detracted understanding. I wrote, “My cuticle

is now scarlet and burning from the excessive abrading I inflicted”(Guerin 1). The appropriate choice for the

word would have been “abrasion” to fully convey to the audience what I was trying to say.

While writing the investigstive report, meeting the rhetorical situation proved to be especially difficult.

Personally, my strength is narrative writing which can contain bias and opinions, but with investigative reports,

the author’s views cannot be present. Another challenge with the report was it was done collaboratively.

Writing collaboratively is a new skill that was introduced to me through Writing 104. My group laid out all our

information prior to writing, so the piece did not seem to have several different voices, but rather one distinct

voice that was prevalent throughout the piece without bias. Going on in college, having this experience already,

I will be advantaged compared to those who have never written an essay/report collaboratively effectively.

Along with the investigstive report, to sort outside research we developed individual annotated

bibliographies. Having doing this prior to coming together to write the report, it was extremely beneficil in

pinpointing sufficient resources and facts that would best fit the piece. The annotation after the cited source

provides a rememberance of credibility, relevance, and quality. The annotated bibliography was done in both

MLA and APA expanding my citation knowledge best preparing me in the case that I was asked to cite APA

instead of the typical high school MLA.

During my semester in Writing 104, I was gifted with significant tools that will continue to benefit me

through the rest of my educational path and beyond. I readjusted my focuses regarding using proper parts of

speech, tense, and meeting the needs of the rhetorical situation at hand to enhance the pieces. These are areas I

need to continue working on to improve my writing and my understanding of rhetorical situations as well as the

English language. Being exposed to many new types of writing and different formats expanded my experience
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in writing that will continue to be beneficial. I can now effectively comunicate in a variety of formats as well as

give and receive substantial feedback to and from my peers.