Devin Kyle Hembree

Mrs. Thomas
UWRT 1102-021
November 30, 2015
Final Reflection
1.

Choose a song or musical composition that communicates your experience with writing

and UWRT 1102. Consider including a video of the song. Explain your choice.
Finding a song that accurately communicates my experience with writing was very
challenging. The best one that I know is the song Nasty Letter by Otis Taylor. The song starts
with a slow strumming of a guitar and gradually speeds up. It almost sounds like background
music for a Wild West duel. In a way, that is how I feel when I begin writing a new text. I stare at
the blank screen as I plan my writing, mentally preparing myself pull the trigger and start writing
at any moment.
Approximately one minute into the song, the strumming becomes much faster paced and
intense. This would represent how I feel once I have actually begun writing. Although the music
is fast, I tend to take my time when it comes to writing, but I do not stop once I start. When the
lyrics come into the song, Otis sings:
Somebody wrote me a nasty letter,
But they didn't sign their name
I think I know, I know who wrote it
Well I recognize, recognize that hand
This would represent when I receive constructive criticism on my writing, or perhaps a poor grade
from a teacher. I tend to try extraordinarily hard on my first draft, in an attempt to wow my audience.

Because of this, I usually do not receive much feedback, so when I do receive negative feedback, I
take it very personally.

2.

If you were to teach this class, what ideas would you emphasis?
One of the main ideas that I would emphasize is that writing should be something that

you enjoy. I feel that our educational system has created a negative connotation of writing among
students, which has caused students to dislike writing and think of it as a chore. I think this is
probably because students arent usually interested in what they are writing about. This brings
me to another idea that I would stress as an instructor. Choose your writing topics wisely. I
would stress the importance of caring about your topic, because it has been my experience that I
enjoyed writing so much more when I was actually engaged with my topic.
3.

Explain how your understanding of rhetorical knowledge has changed over the course of

the semester using at least three examples from your writing (ex. Did you shift an assignment to
better fit a particular genre like a proposal?).
If I am being honest, my understanding of rhetorical knowledge has not significantly
changed during this semester. I have taken many writing courses, and I pride myself in my ability
to know my audience. I feel that most of my writings in this course were already intended for
such a broad audience, because it was about happiness and everyone is interested in happiness.
During my inquiry proposal, I focused more on getting my audience to understand the
development of my inquiry rather than simply stating my question. I did so by using an in depth
analogy of the pursuit of happiness.
I will admit that I did not know very much about writing genres before this class. I knew fiction
and non-fiction, but that was the extent of my knowledge. I have learned many new things about
genres and how to identify them. I tried to steer my papers away from the academic genre to
avoid boring my audience. I hoped to make my papers very useful for my audience

by explaining common misconceptions and explaining how to obtain happiness. By trying to

assist my reader, rather than entertain them, which gave my paper purpose.
4.

Explain how your critical reading has improved during the semester. (Ex. In what ways

did you read across texts for connections and patterns in your inquiry?)
I feel that my critical reading has improved greatly over the course of the semester, due to
the research I did on happiness. Unlike research that I have performed in the past, I actually used
physical books rather than electronic sources. I feel that helped me understand and remember
what I was reading more so than when I read something from a website. During my research, I
tried to get a wide variety of sources that all had a very different view on happiness. For
example, one would focus on history, while another would focus on religion. While I was
reading each source, my goal was to find correlating ideas or opinions shared by each author.
5.

Discuss your composing processes. Ex. Did you conduct additional research while

revising or after consulting a colleague? Provide at least three examples to support your
assertion.
My composing process began with establishing a topic for my writings. For example, in
my inquiry proposal I stated a question that was very different from my final thesis, but they
shared the same topic. When I began my inquiry I knew I wanted to write about happiness, but I
wasnt sure about my question so I asked a question related to happiness and then continued to
revise my question during my research on happiness.
In an attempt to research happiness, I looked at multiple aspects of how people found
happiness. For example, some claim happiness is found through loving others, while others say it
is found through loving yourself or loving God. I created a list of these aspects and looked for
their presence in each source that I used. I found that some authors focused on religion, self-love,

romantic love, wealth, and philosophy. After finding correlating ideas between each source, I
chose the one that appeared most often, which was Greek philosophy, and did additional research
on it.
Once I felt I had an adequate amount of information about my topic, I took the popular
ideas from each source and put them on sticky notes, then proceeded to place the sticky notes on
the wall over my computer as a visual aid in constructing the basic skeleton of my thesis paper.
6.

Provide at least three examples of your knowledge of conventions (ex. sentence level

changes, MLA citations).

I try to demonstrate my knowledge of conventions by using correct grammar and
properly using commas. For example, when I use transition words like however, I know to put
a semicolon before it if it and a comma after. Also, I know to use internal citations that include
the authors last name and page number inside parenthesis before the period at the end of a the
sentence. Another example of my knowledge of writing conventions would be to put your
sources in alphabetical order on your works cited page when using MLA format.
7.

Critical Reflection: a) Discuss an example of choices made during a composition. b)

Explain what you think is most important in providing commentary on others work and
receiving commentary on your own. Provide at least three examples of your nuanced use of
commentary in your writing projects.
a) A good example of some of the choices I have made during one of my compositions for
this course would be choosing my inquiry question. At first, my question was going to be
about sadness. I considered sadness, because while I attended ECU I went through
culture shock, and found myself suffering from depression. Also, many of my family and
loved ones have suffered from depression, so I had plenty of life experiences to reference

in my paper. However, I quickly decided against it. The thought of writing multiple
papers on sadness is just too depressing, so I decided to write about happiness instead. At
first, I wanted to know: "Can happiness be attained isolation?" What I was hoping to
figure out was if you needed other people to be happy, or if it could be achieved
internally through self-love. It seemed like a good question until I actually tried to
research it. Once I had begun the researching process, I realized that I needed to know
what happiness was before I could figure out how it was achieved. This led me to revise
my question to "What is Happiness?" As it turned out, I answered my original question
while investigating what happiness was.
b) I feel that the most important aspect to peer reviewing is receiving feedback from an
unbiased audience. This really helps the reader get a better idea of how they should
address the audience, or perhaps provide more information if the reader is confused by
something. It is very important not to take others criticism personally. Their input is
meant to be constructive, not degrading. I often found myself struggling with this in my
previous peer review sessions. Also, It is very important not to be a Grammar Nazi if you
are reviewing the first draft. It can often be discouraging to receive your peer reviewed
rough draft, only to find red marks all over it. The best thing to focus on when reviewing
the first draft is identifying the message that the author is trying to portray and
commenting on how they might better portray their message.

Examples of Commentary from my projects:

After the peer review of the first draft of my Inquiry Proposal, one of my group
members brought it to my attention that the word dependency made him think

of drug addiction. This led me to revise my question an ultimately change the

entire underlying topic of my paper.

Another piece of advice that I applied to my writings, was during my thesis paper.
Another fellow group member mention that I did not clearly state the beliefs of
each Greek Philosopher, so I decided to expand that portion of my paper. This
caused my paper to take more of the philosophical approach that I was originally

trying to avoid.
My final example of commentary is also in my thesis. There was a quote that I
tried to fit into a paragraph so that it might flow better; however, as my instructor
brought to my attention, it was a rouge quote. I did not introduce who the quote
was from, so I went back and revised the paragraph to fix this mistake.