Running head: FINAL REFLECTION

Final Reflection
Bryan Avitia
University of Texas at El Paso

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Final Reflection

Rhetorical and Writing Studies (RWS) 1302 has guided me to overcome a better writer. I
have taken RWS 1301 and it helped me understood the basics about writing and it was a very
challenging class as well. But with RWS 1302 shaped my writing process that I believe it is
better and perhaps more precise. With this class and the teachings from Ms. Tinoco I learned how
to input sources correctly but most importantly I learned how to look for those sources in the
right places. Whether they were academic peer-review papers, periodicals, magazine articles, or
internet information all of these have a different way to be cited and it was something I did not
know and learn with this class. Learning this was very helpful for this class and I am sure it will
be very helpful in the future. I learned that writing a college paper is more than just writing but it
takes practice, it is time consuming, and it helps to view different points of view that differ from
yours. I do not think it is either difficult or easy to write for a college audience rather once
writing for a college audience we need to be responsible and take the assignment in a deliberated
way because we need to keep in mind that a college audience ranges from the students all the
way to the university staff and why not even the president of the university might be there.
Even though we only met once a week and sometimes we had the chance that class was
canceled when we met in that classroom was time to get some serious jobs done. We had various
assignments, such as the Autoethnography paper or the Genre Analysis paper, both of them being
the first two assignments we had to complete at the beginning of the semester. Before this class I
have completed a couple of essays mainly in RWS 1301 but also for History classes as well as
Criminal Justice been fairly easy. But in RWS 1302 our main topic was popular cultures which
made the class more interesting and at certain extend having the chosen topic guided to the main
idea which is pop culture. For example I started the semester with women in the military as a

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topic and it took me a while to understand why it was not a perfect topic to begin with and it was
because military itself is not a pop culture for everyone within our community such as the use of
cellphone, the different types of clothing to be used in our society, or Disney movies mainly
because women in the military is popular but within the military population which is a very
trending topic as of right now. When I realized I had to changed it was when I was looking for
information about women in the military and I was just pulling things related to women, military,
and war. When I changed the filters to women, military, and pop culture zero results were shown
and because it does not relate together there is not such information that match in todays society.
This is when I realized that women, military, and movies were by far a greater combination and I
found more than 700 results with this description because it is related to us and at the same times
it is something that it is important because it relates to mainly to gender.
The assignment I enjoyed the most was the Research paper because it gave me the
opportunity to say my point of view and even though it was the longest essay of the semester I
had fun researching all my sources and gaining more knowledge about the topic and the
struggles of women through history. The assignment I liked the least was the outline but once I
used to for research paper it guided me through the process and I felt the essay was easier to
complete because I had my ideas and my points already set up in order for the essay to flow. The
best part of being in this class was using Google drive, definitely. It is my first time using this
drive and I will keep using it first of all because we did not waste any paper printing all those
assignments. It is also a great way to keep in communication within our class because like I said
earlier we met only once a week. RWS 1302 used the drive for basically everything, to turn in
papers and for peer revision which is also a great way to gain more knowledge about the writing

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process because you see someone elses writing and help them fix any mistakes the author did
not catch.
With all this summed up, I can say that being able to take RWS 1302 helped me become a
better writer, student, and person. All the assignments had a purpose and it is very important to
get in consideration the meaning of each one and put it to work in our daily lives.