1

Final Reflective Essay

When I first began my journey with this course, I was convinced that I was a great writer.

For as long as I can remember, I have always been able to earn high grades on writing

assignments without putting too much effort in. I accomplished this by simply using impressive

words, proper punctuation, and good grammar to make my essays look well written. In all

honestly, I fully expected to get away with using these tools for my writing assignments in this

class, but I soon found out that my writing was in need of major improvements. After completing

the first writing project draft, I realized that my current writing habits were not enough to make

me a good writer. My peers’ feedback indicated that I needed to work on conveying my message

more effectively instead of focusing on the aesthetics of my papers. When I started to learn about

the tools of revision, I began to pinpoint specific areas where my writing needed improvement.

In-class exercises that challenged me to highlight every sentence that was not relevant to

my paper topic forced me to come to terms with one of my biggest writing flaws—rambling. I

was constantly going off topic with unnecessary commentary in my essays that did not help to

convey the overall message. This resulted in large sections of my essays being unhelpful, and

unsupported by my evidence. Another notable issue with my writing was the wordiness. I had

always been taught to be as descriptive as possible with my writing, so I thought that it made my

writing good. In reality, it complicated the message that I was trying to send, and overshadowed

my main points. Despite coming into Writing 2 with the need for significant improvement, I

believe that this course has helped me to become a better writer by giving me the tools to correct

these issues. Through my final revisions of the first and last writing projects, I tried to pinpoint

and correct occurrences of these bad habits. In addition, I made an effort to revisit the overall
 2

structure, presentation, and substance of my writings in order to create the best version of each

assignment. I believe that these efforts will show through the improvements in my essays.

When I was revising the first writing project, my initial focus was improving my

descriptions of each genre’s conventions. My submission draft of the first writing project

emphasized the different writing convention of love songs and romantic poems, but failed to

form an adequate comparison of the two genres. This failure was partly due to the fact that I was

not descriptive enough about the distinct conventions of each genre. For instance, in my

submission draft I noted love songs and romantic poems both use imagery to create an intimate

scene. However, I failed to mention the different ways in which imagery is used in each genre.

When I wrote my final draft, I made sure to emphasize how imagery is a key part of romantic

poems, but only a secondary detail for love songs. I used the same strategy when I described the

use of diction in both genres. Instead of focusing on their similar use of diction, I chose to

highlight the different effects diction can have in each genre. For romantic poems, diction is

what makes them romantic; when it comes to songs, diction isn’t as important as pace and tone

for conveying affection. Altering my essay to focus on the differences between the two genres

instead of similarities made it easier to explain how love songs could be better at conveying love

than romantic poems. In my submission draft, the similarities between the two genres made it

unclear whether one would be more useful than the other. My final draft fixed that by focusing

on the different effects of the shared genre characteristics, and how love songs were better

communicators.

I also focused on the structure of my first writing project when I was making my final

corrections. In my submission draft, I made the mistake of addressing each genre all at once. For

instance, I talked about the characteristics of a romantic poem for three consecutive paragraphs
 3

before I even addressed the love song genre conventions a single time. This created a lack of

continuity in my essay because it was as if my two genres were never coming into direct contact

with each other. Instead of comparing between the genres, I was essentially listing all of their

properties without any real comparison. I corrected this issue by alternating between genres with

every paragraph. For example, I maintained my first body paragraph’s focus on imagery in

romantic poetry, but I altered my second paragraph significantly. I transformed it from a

continuation of poetic conventions to a comparison between poetic uses of imagery and musical

ones. This created more explicit points of comparison between my genres, and allowed me to

support my conclusion that love songs were more effective.

When I wrote my revisions of the second writing project, I had to completely alter the

appearance of my genre translation. The initial infographic that I had made was too vague to do

Martin Luther King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” justice. The different sections of the

infographic were too close together, the words were hard to read against the backdrop, and the

aesthetic was underwhelming. I changed that by dividing my sections into three display formats

that made them easily distinguishable. I also added more visible headers that divided my sections

by subject matter. Lastly, I added more graphics to improve the look of the infographic, and to

visually guide the reader through the material. Ultimately, I believe that these changes made my

translation easier to understand, and more eye-catching.

I changed the substance of the second writing project by omitting information that was

unnecessarily included in my submission draft. For instance, I had originally included a lengthy

description of the context behind King’s letter in my introductory paragraph. Although context is

important for understanding the reasons behind my translation, I found that I had included too

much background information. I shortened the multi-sentence description to just a few sentences,
 4

and focused on explaining the benefits of my translation instead. This revision helped me to get

to the point much sooner, and reduced wordiness in my introductory paragraph. My first body

paragraph saw major revisions as I went into greater detail concerning why the infographic is a

more effective communicator than a letter. I connected the new-age need for concise

information, and the unexpected popularity of the letter to the ineffectiveness of Dr. King’s

original format. This served to clarify my reasons for choosing to carry out such a translation in

the first place. I also tried to be more specific about the benefits and costs of using infographics

in my final revision. In my fourth body paragraph, I went into more detail about the struggles

that I had with the infographic’s space restrictions. Instead of mentioning this issue in passing, I

provided reasons for why the short format of the infographic was beneficial, and why it limited

the details of the message. These changes in the substance of my essay clarified the specific

concerns with my translation, and eliminated unnecessary information.

After completing my final revisions and reflecting on how my writing process has

changed, I am still left with questions of improvement. This course has enabled me to pinpoint

the flaws in my writing, but I still struggle to overcome years of bad writing advice. I know that

my writing needs to be less wordy and more informative, but I haven’t figured out how to

consistently make those changes. After all, years of writing this way have made it hard for me to

realize when I am falling back on old habits. In the future, I’d like to keep working on these

specific issues with my writing by using the revision tools I learned from this course. With the

ability to effectively revise my own writing, I will finally be able to call myself a good writer

someday. In the meantime, my revision skills will remain the strongest feature of my writing

because they help me to pinpoint areas that need improvement.

5