Reflection

 Emily Czerw

ENC2135 0181

Ms. Adams

04/28/2023

Electronic Portfolio

         The main lesson this course has taught me was what rhetorical pieces were. Before this class, I never wrote a rhetorical essay nor did a project on one. In projects two and three, we had to use rhetorical artifacts and rhetorical rationales. With that, we also had to use the correct terminology, such as medium, pathos, ethos, logos, exigence, constraints, etc., and I have never even heard of those terms before in an English class setting. Now, if I ever have to conduct any rhetorical analyses, I will be much more informed about the topic because of this class.

          Another lesson I learned is to attend more office hours and look at assignments at the beginning of the week. I found myself confused on some of the project directions because it was harder to understand reading them online than hearing them in person. If I looked at the posts at the beginning of the week every week, I would be able to attend the office hours on Tuesdays to ask my questions. However, there were a couple of weeks where I would check the assignment posts on a Wednesday and then it would be too late to clarify my concerns during office hours. This isn’t just a lesson for this class, but for every class in the future. Although I am mostly organized, there are weeks where I suddenly am crammed with assignments, and this class taught me that I really need to stay on top of my work at the beginning of each week. 

          With that being said, something I really enjoyed about this class was the organization and the setup of every assignment. I enjoyed that we got all of our work for the week at the beginning of the week, and it was always due on Fridays. This was refreshing because we didn’t have to worry about our work over the weekend. It was also helpful that we could get all of our work for that week done Monday and then not have to worry about anything until the next assignment. Lastly, I thoroughly enjoyed how we had multiple drafts for our projects. This really helped me not procrastinate my assignments. For example, for project one we had three drafts for the essay. Knowing myself, if I was given three weeks for that assignment with no rough draft options, I would have started working on my essay a few days before it was due. The layout of this class and the due dates really helped me stay on top of my work.

        One thing I hope to improve on in the future is my writing skills in general. English was never my strong suit in school, but I think this class has strengthened me as a writer. I want to improve my language, organization, and focus only on the prompts of the assignments in my pieces. I do think this class has helped me take steps to advance those aspects of my writing. I was introduced to new styles of writing, got very helpful feedback, and conducted many different styles of projects. Now going forward, I will definitely use the skills I’ve gained from this class in any future writing projects. 

       The feedback from my peers and professor is what really helped me in this class. When I would submit rough drafts, I thought they would be pretty good. But sometimes, when I got the feedback, I was proven wrong. This was only helpful to me as a student and writer. I also really appreciated my peers' feedback and being able to see their rough drafts, because that is what helped me get a better grasp on the assignments and how I should tackle them. 

      Lastly, this class made me realize what I need to do to be more successful in the future. For starters, I need to start reading more, whether it's essays, books, or articles. I need to see more styles of writing and take away what I like and don’t like from them, and use that in my writing. Like I said, English has never been my strong suit in school, but now that I’m older, I need to make a bigger attempt to strengthen my reading and writing skills. I also learned that I need to attend more office hours with any professor in the future. Sometimes I get nervous, or I find myself too busy to attend, but going to office hours will only help me succeed in the future. Overall, this class has taught me many lessons about what I could do to succeed with writing and even any other classes in the future.