Douglas Lee

Ms. Vogt
UNWT 1101 Reflection
November 29, 2014
A Reflection
KABAAM!!! First semester of freshmen year at the University of North Carolina at
Charlotte already flown by... Kind of like those bi-polar weather days zipping through Charlotte.
It was so fast, my memory couldnt possibly retain all that it wanted to! Classes were a struggle I
have to say, and most of the classes I chose were classes that I already knew I had to put forth
effort into paying attention and studying to achieve a passing grade. But on the contrary, there
was one class to which I questioned the existence; its called University Writing. UNWT 1101,
taught by a graduate student; Ms. Vogt, was that one class I had very little interest in taking even
though it was a prerequisite. The moment I registered it into my schedule was the last moment I
ever looked back on it. The world has taught me that life is full of unexpected surprises and Ms.
Vogts UNWT 1101 class turned out to be one of those many surprises! Never did it smack me
in the face and say Douglas Lee sir, pay attention youre running off the railroad tracks!
rather it intrigued me in a different way. A way that I barely needed the skill to remember, a way
that felt instrumentally inside my soul, a way that smoothly paced into the beginning of my
college experience.
The biggest idea taken in account in UNWT 1101 was Genre. Whats genre? How do we
categorize genres? Is genre supposed to be a group of something? Does that mean Im a genre?
Well, let me just say nothing is guaranteed a specific genre unless its known by popular view.

Genre was and still is a difficult idea to comprehend because almost every single thing on the
planet can be placed in a kind of genre. In UNWT 1101, I learned two important factors of
identifying a genre; its purpose and expectations. Ask yourself, What is the expected view when
this is shown to various people? If you can pinpoint one big purpose, then it would be clear that
whatever you are looking at and analyzing is probably a genre. An example of a genre would be
an agenda. An agenda is a genre because if I were to go around the country and ask individuals
what is the expectations/purpose of an agenda majority of the feedback would deviate around
its a booklet for organization of daily tasks and deadlines then you engage into its features
that makes up its specific genre agendas have annual and daily timeframes on them that
usually sits near the corners or sides of the booklet, and a vast amount of space to write within
the dated timeframes. Very few times would you see an agenda being a stack of blank copy
papers now days they are unique in features and purpose.
UNWT 1101 focused on four major genres. The first major genre assignment that
I ever accomplished for UNWT 1101 was the literacy narrative Because the topic for the
literacy narrative was based on retracing development through the analytical analysis of people,
factors, and experiences, the essay wasnt too difficult to accomplish. It was primarily about
literacy development that was personal rather than literacy development researched by a third
party. Receiving a C as a ghost grade for the draft of my literacy narrative reinforced my
personal errors within the text. Why? Because at times, I was able to fully understand my
explanations of literacy development while at other times it took me a moment or two to get the
idea across my head again, and if that took me a while imagine someone else trying to
understand the big idea. They were probably lost and it might have had taken more than a while
for that reader outside of the context to understand; thats if they ever did. Therefore, peer review

was somewhat a good resource in suggestions of revision. I found some peer reviews to be quite
a drastic turn into my paper positively and/or negatively. I felt like some revision suggestions
were due to not understanding the attitude of the paper while other suggestions could have
thrown the paper off topic very easily. But as a complete idea, I recognized that these
suggestions are concepts that need to be taken into account. Your paper obviously has an
audience and to achieve the papers audience in some cases, is to achieve the audiences
suggestions.
My wording in my literacy narrative wasnt supposed to be very lengthy and confusing,
but it was supposed to allow the reader to taste the rainbow of what kind of writer I freely am. In
my mind, that kind of writing is a bit off standard writing but I felt like it was the best way to
show who I am as a free writer. I am fully capable of writing a well written essay that would be
able to please many professors but for my literacy narrative I wanted give a little of Douglas
Writing Style and Standard Writing Style. In my style, my sentences were a bit chopped with
semicolons and commas, I also added a little of undefined words. But of course staying within
some boundaries of the standard writing so that my readers can be able to understand most of the
aspects of the paper.
Now that I have taken the time to look back and reflect on my literacy narrative, I can see
how I would be able to revise this paper into a better well understanding piece of text and still be
able to explain my writing development through the mixed usage of writing styles. One big issue
I have when writing is the way I word my context. I cannot stress how badly I can word things;
personally the wording doesnt bother me until I have read it three hundred times and I notice
that it doesnt fit into the standard way of understanding word context. Thus, in the end my
reader has a single massively large question mark at the top of their head probably saying

This doesnt make any sense? UNWT 1101 has really allowed me to realize that this is my
issue. Jumping back and forth, my genre analysis had issues with this concept of wording as
well. And throughout all my papers that I have done for UNWT 1101 it illustrated this error
through feedback comments; whether it was from Ms. Vogt or from my peers it went along
the line of Im a bit confused because of how you used this in the sentence or the sentence
itself.
My ethnography was a blast! I would have never thought writing assignments were this
fun!!! Though the thought of aligning the text orderly without conjunction of random words was
a rough aspect in the paper. As before, I have a tendency to unnaturally word contextual
meanings thus, in my ethnography I was very cautious about this problem. I received a B as a
ghost grade on this assignment and I felt like receiving a B showed self-improvement. I realize
that I was able to accomplish my midterm goal of being better at revising my own work; in
which I definitely took longer revising the ethnography assignment compared to my literacy
narrative.
An issue that I focused on within the revision of the ethnography assignment was the
main reason idea to why I was given an ethnography assignment. The assignment was to show
how a community is categorized as a community and to which ways does this community
demonstrate its community as a whole. My ethnography touched based on the community but I
supplemented it with a lot of information on the communities focus rather than the community
itself and how does it call itself a community. The additional information are keys aspects that
reasons the communities existence as a community, I just need to associate it to that reason.
For example, I took some time and space in my ethnography explaining the body figure
of ideal racing pigeons in the racing pigeon community but I rarely touched base on how this

ideal body figure of racing pigeons linked racing fanciers to think alike which was a reason
why they are a community; because they think alike and have similarities of certain concepts.
This portrayed onto much of the extra information added into the paper which needed a
connection to the aspects of forming the community.
Realizing my faults through proofreading past texts and revision illustrated clear gaps
that needed to be added into future papers to fully get the concept across. From my genre
analysis to my literacy narrative to my ethnography I saw major improvement. I noticed that
throughout my genre analysis I began to see things more of an analytical aspect once I started the
comparison of my worst genre analysis to my best it clearly showed different views which
helped me grasp what a genre analysis actually consisted of. The same went with my literacy
and ethnography, I reflected on my faults in my literacy and I was able to avoid them in my
ethnography.
One assignment that held a lasting impression on me was my genre swap. To be honest, I
didnt know what I was really going to do until I took the time to remember that I read a
journal a while back that could have possibly been a starting idea for the genre swap. The journal
was called Following the Water: A Hydromancers Notebook by David M. Carroll. He took a
journey into the environment of the box and spotted turtles habitat and jotted things down that he
realized and were surprised about; which I felt like it related to my ethnography since I also took
a journey into a new habitat that I jotted new and surprising things. Thus, in the end I decided
to create a journal of the racing pigeon community as my genre swap.
Ms. Vogt was really inspiring throughout my ethnography and genre swap. I say this
because when I mentioned my community to her, she probably had no clue what it was about but
the fact that she kept up with asking me questions about my community and making sure I was

on the right track motivated me. Her reaction wasnt very skeptical at all, rather it was more of
an impression which further contributed to my incentive of swapping my ethnography for the
genre swap. Reflecting on my genre swap, I felt very satisfied with my journal. There could of
have been more improvement such as more personal drawings and having more decorative
aspects but, I felt like I really delivered my context in its genre format appropriately.
The ending result of my genre swap certainly fostered my growth as a writer. Because
being able to demonstrate a well-illustrated journal from a different genre elucidated that that
genre that I exchanged had to also have quality aspects. Thus allowing for me to be able to
swiftly shift it over without various contextual difficulties. It would have been more difficult for
me to genre swap my literacy narrative than my ethnography because the style of writing in my
literacy was very mixed and confusing which would of caused my genre swap to be confusing
and probably would have concluded in a misunderstood idea.
Agree with me or not, but I just realized that UNWT 1101 incorporated a senior project
into its academic system. Why do I say this? Because I literally just realized that I created a
research paper (ethnography) and a product (genre swap). I dislike and disown senior
projects but the most memorable thing about this senior project for UNWT 1101 was that I
didnt even think of it as a senior project until after finishing both assignments; which took close
to over a month to accomplish. I was too busy having too much enjoyment out of it to recognize
the similarities. There was also a portfolio for the high school project as well!!! What a
coincidence, or is it?
Speaking of portfolios, I customized my web portfolio in a way that was unusual but still
easy to grasp. Reflecting back on the reason why I did this, it was in purpose to be different. I
didnt want a portfolio that looked exactly like someone elses that would be very dull. Thus I

added accessible buttons that when clicked-on would bring up the desired page. I also planned on
initially creating those pages as menus at the top of the home page for my reference but as
finishing up the portfolio, I would delete those menus which would only allow the viewer to
be able to view those desired pages by clicking on the clickable buttons. This is one of the many
risks I am taking, hoping that nothing goes wrong with the link connections and that the one way
of accessing the desired pages would go as planned.
I never would have thought UNWT 1101 to be such a memorable class. Because in the
beginning it looked like another worthless prerequisite I needed to get over with. I didnt learn a
vast amount of information like in Chemistry or Biology, but I learned a deep understanding on a
small scale of information used worldwide; especially the concept of Genres. It doesnt matter
how much you learned, it matters how well you learned it; and UNWT 1101 definitely engaged
me to become a better writer -even if it was only a tad difference- without a doubt. I have made
choices in the past that I regretted making but UNWT 1101 with Ms. Vogt is one decision I am
grateful I came across.