As a writer in this class, I feel that I have improved a lot when it comes to writing. In this class, my peers and professor evaluate my work, allowing me to improve my own writing based on their responses. They may spot a detail of my writing that can be improved upon. This class has given me much insight on my own writing, as the reviews I receive helped me realize that I can write better if I connect to certain objects or emotions while I write. Each insight is valuable and helps me look out for some flaws I make while I write.

           A major lesson I learned in this class was to connect my experiences or emotions to my writing in order to make it more meaningful and easier to write. I feel that this is most reflected in one of the description assignments: “Description of a Process.” Here, we describe a process and its steps. One of my favorite foods is pizza. I learned to make it from a youtube video, which I still remember well. This experience let me write this essay easily. The first paragraph of this assignment sums up all of my feeling for it: “While reading this assignment, the first thing that came to my mind was cooking. Cooking has is a process to get delicious food to eat. My favorite food is New York style pizza. I got this recipe from a Youtube video by Adam Ragueda.” I used the experience of following this recipe to better explain the process. This is one the few insights I gained in my writing.

One of the problems I experiences in writing was the formatting. This was shown when I tries to do my rough drafts for the Literature Review and Rhetorical Analysis assignments. There, most of the topics I wrote was all over the place. For example, there was a point when the section where topic number two was displayed contained section info relevant to topic number 1. An excerpt from the final draft of the literature review showed this: “Mars’s magnetic poles cannot create an effective barrier, which will prove harmful to humans if it is not addressed. The article goes on to state the objectives for further study, such as measuring magnetization directions and the internal structure of Mars.” Before, this section talked about microorganisms and how they can make food to help the astronauts. The Mars food situation was discussed in topic 1, while topic 2 revolved around magnetic fields. The difference and irrelevance of the info displayed was one of my glaring weaknesses while writing. In high school, it was one of the main reasons I got a lower grade on assignments; I neglected to organize my writing in a presentable way.

A major part to mention in this class is that it is entirely online for this semester. I feel that this gave me a challenge, as I believe that writing out notes and listening to lectures in a classroom environment helps me retain most of the information. Despite this, online classes has their own merits. For instance, we can view all our peers’ work in real time just by clicking on their assignment they posted. This greatly helps us view each other’s writing style and how they write compared to your writing. The best part is how feedback is delivered to me and my peers. We respond to what we read on Blackboard as homework. The feedback i receive in this way is better, as you type your response after carefully reading the work you see. An example of this is during one of our first assignments: “Description of a Thing.” There, I received feedback that I was being repetitive, and one of the lines that I felt showed this was: “I played many games with it. I mainly played Minecraft and listened to music and videos with this headset.” I started this line, and a few lines before it, with the word I, which is not a good way to write an essay. It was a habit I got, which I amended as soon as I could.

The shift between online and in person classes still affects me. While I adapted quite well to online classes at this point, I fear for how it will affect me when everything returns to normal. During the pandemic, my sleep schedule has been drastically changed due to the fact that I could stay home for a majority of the time. It will take some time until I can adjust back to an in person class, and that worries me. I do not wish to miss out any of my classes on account of my tardiness. Another thing to note is how this will affect my writing. For a majority of the pandemic, I have almost exclusively typed all of my assignments. Although I do not use any grammar checking sites, I wonder how my writing will have changed compared to before the pandemic. I feel that typing an essay is completely different from writing one, as you have the help of programs and easy access to Google when typing, but when writing, it takes longer to gather information and check for spelling errors. I do not know how it will affect my writing, but I want to find a way to improve in my handwritten essays so I do not mess up any in class work that future classes will give.

Overall, my semester in this class was terrific. The skills and insights I learned in this class will help improve my writing and hopefully help me to spot any errors I cannot find at the moment. Every lesson I learned in this class is valuable, as it helps my writing over all, rather than just focusing on a single aspect of it. I hope to take what I learned and apply it to any class I can use it on. I enjoyed every minute in this class, and I hope every one of my classmates did as well.