John Abrams

December 9th, 2016

Prof. Richard
Unit 4
The placement essay I wrote over the summer for this class talked a lot
about my writing struggles. It touched on things such as my perfectionism
and how it can lead to writers block, and how other stress I may be
experiencing can hinder this process even further. I knew I had these issues
going in, and the beginning of the semester pretty much confirmed that they
were indeed still there. The first two papers were very much a struggle for
me, I think because of the stress at the beginning of the semester, with
adjusting to the workload and college life in general. I spent time spinning
my wheels and dreading the writing process and was not thrilled with the
products I put out. I was more focused on producing a completed paper by
the deadline than multiple revisions and edits. More so surviving and getting
by than thriving. For the second essay, I utilized the Writing Center and
thought it was a huge help to flesh out my ideas and come up with a plan
when I felt overwhelmed and unable to begin. Having this service available is
a huge benefit and one I will utilize in the future if necessary.
As the semester progressed I became more comfortable with college
as a whole, and I think this translated to my management of work and
writing as well. The third essay was the piece I was the proudest of. I revised
it multiple times and really bought in and invested time and effort into
improving the final draft and not being satisfied with a passable draft. This
paper also showed me that I have a strength in personal writing. I had a

much easier time letting myself write without stress. When writing more
research based papers I second guess myself, looking for the correct
answer. With personal writing I can just write from what I know. (how will I
continue to improve my writing, )
In both the truth essay and memoir I experienced learning while
writing. For the truth essay, I went into it trying not to let my prior opinion
influence me. Instead I let the research I accumulated help lead me towards
the truth. In addition, the assignment was focused more on the process of
how these different outlets present fact and not necessarily finding one thing
that is right, which goes along with the idea of learning while writing,
discovering how the information was presented. In the memoir essay I also
felt myself learning during the process of writing, this time about myself. My
epiphany was originally about how I realized that parents made mistakes, but
as I wrote about and thought of the event I realized the parallels to
stereotypical teenage behavior. My epiphany became focused more on how it
made me relate to my parents more.
When writing the Pratt essay

HELP going about answering some learning goals

1. Students write both to learn and to communicate what they learn. Writing to learn truth essay
and memoir
2. Students negotiate their own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of
genre, medium, and situation.
4. Students revise their writing using responses from others, including peers, consultants, and
teachers
9. Students practice critical reading strategies.
10. Students provide revision-based response to their peers.

11. Students reflect on their writing processes and self-assess as writers.

See if can add to beginning to flesh out questions, then conclude

I think you have a firm grasp on what it is specifically you struggle with in
writing and how the writing this semester helped you fix that to an extent. A
way in which you could further extrapolate would be to focus on you
writing/editing process and how/if that changed at all. Also mention the peer
review and critical reading strategies that may have helped you in your
writing as well.