Trenton Metcalf

ENG 101-24

Crystal Matey

30 April 2019

Critical Reflection

Writing is one of the academic rigors that one must deal with when going through the

education system. We use it to analyze, commentate, and generally communicate an idea. The

better one can write, the better one can get an idea across to an audience. Writing is something

that needs to be worked on. It’s easy to learn but incredibly difficult to master. My writing is

better today than it was a year ago, and a year into the future, it should be better than today. My

writing as an individual has increased in nuance and skill over the course of the semester, and I

am better able to communicate as a result of it.

I am by no means a good writer. It is one of the aspects of academics I lack in. I consider

myself to be mediocre. With the first assignment, that being the multimedia assignment, I just let

it flow. I had no attack plan for what to write so it was somewhat of a freestyle. I have always

felt strongly about religion and so a lot of my paper talked about it. It reads like a rant and it’s

quite sloppy. I felt as though I had to repeat myself too often to get to the word count for the

rough draft of the assignment. I stated “Religion is a fear of death” at least two different times in

the script. I consistently catch myself repeating ideas, and the more writing I’ve done the better I

have gotten at catching myself. At one point my wording just gets awkward. I said “Now a life

cut short is tragic and it’s hard to accept that someone’s life was cut short,” This is where it

becomes quite obvious that there was not much polishing on the script. A large part of my

writing problem is laziness, and it is apparent nowhere else more than this assignment. However,
I am attempting to overcome this problem, although it is difficult with a bad procrastination

habit. This was not an assignment I could legitimately say I was proud of, or even put that much

effort into. It was a disappointment.

Our next assignment was more involved where writing is concerned. It was analysis

intensive and required more effort to thoughtfully write the ideas I tried to purvey. I approached

this assignment with a skeptical eye. It required me to look at both sides, including one I disagree

with. This forced me to broaden my mind to review the other sidesside’s argument in order to get

a sense of what it was they were trying to get across. The most difficult was the non-bias source.

I honestly had to finesse the paragraph to even make it work, and even so it came off as

awkward. Nevertheless I got it. Despite the adversity of analyzing a non-bias source’s rhetoric, I

persevered. At the end of it all, perseverance is the only thing that will get us through. It would

be so easy to give up and take the loss, and just not care. I can’t do that. In that way my writing

has gotten better. More than improving on my core technique, it is learning to keep going that

has pushed me to be a better writer. I was barely able to reach the page quota, but I did it by

pushing myself. Much like how I assume I will get through this assignment. I have to say that

writing about the bias I disagreed with was the easiest. I suppose it’s easier to analyze what we

disagree with because of the distaste one has for its core ideas. It requires a stronger fortitude to

analyze what you agree with. Lift your own bias and objectively analyze your own ideals. I will

admit to having a hard time with it myself, despite being a skeptic. We don’t want to believe that

those we agree with are trying to push their ideas on others. We instead want to believe they’re

superior and will shine through on their own. This opened my eyes and made me more critical,

which is not a bad thing.

 I have always been an argumentative person. As a child my brother and I would debate Formatted: Font: (Default) Times New Roman, 12 pt

topics often, but I never felt good about trying to persuade a general audience. I didn’t believe I

could. However, now I am aware of how to use rhetoric to my advantage. This gives me the

upper hand when it comes to assignments such as the infographic. While doing the infographic

assignment, I employed a logical argument in attempt to persuade the viewer about climate

change. Some of the points I made were actually a double edged sword, so to speak. While the

base of the graphic was logic, there was an intentional emotional argument about the killing of

our planet. One might call it a guilt trip, but persuasion is paramount with such important topics

as the future health of the earth. There were more subtle things in the infographic such as the

choice of color. While the colors themselves weren’t quite subtle, their connection to the piece

itself was. Green has long been associated with environmentalism. My goal was for one to

immediately think of the earth the moment they saw the colors and icons, before they even read

the text. This way I could get the audience in a certain headspace before they got into the actual

information. A simple show and not tell. Formatted: Font: 12 pt

The things in writing that I’ve struggled the most on has been the beginning and the end

of my essays. I have simply never been good at introductions or conclusions. My theses have

been vague or formulaic or simply not present. My conclusions unfortunately worse than my

theses, and part of that is the education systems fault, because I was always taught the formulaic

repeating the introduction rule. That isn’t productive for any piece of writing. I’ve always

thought there is no good in repeating yourself to the audience. They may think you are

questioning their intelligence or ability to follow the piece. Even so, I lacked the understanding

of how to end an essay without repeating myself. Yet through this class, I believe I have finally

broke that habit. I’ve learned that a good conclusion should not bring up any new ideas but
instead wrap the essay up tidily by not simply repeating yourself, but by rephrasing your ideas

with a deeper understanding and a sense of closure for the audience. I hope to write a stronger

conclusion for this essay otherwise this reflection will have been in vain.

When I was a kid the idea of fun was to play outside with the neighbor kids. Riding bikes

around and exploring as far as we could. I also grew up with video games, and the single

computer that my family shared. While technology may not have been as prevalent in my

household back then, I still gained a firm grasp on how to use many of the tools technology lent

me. My school also taught me quite a lot from typing, to programming, to using CAD. I have

always been around these technologies and because of this I consider myself to be among the

first generations of the digital natives. However, there are things I did in this class that I had

never known how to do. I had never made an infographic, or created a video that was meant to

tell a story. In that way, I have grown and added a new skill to my arsenal, and that’s all one can

ask of any class is to learn something and become a more well-rounded person.

My communication is stronger having taken this class, and my writing has become better

even if it is not perfect. I have developed my ability to persevere, which is a strong skill to have.

I am now better able to catch when I repeat myself and look in a new direction instead, making

fewer redundancies in my writing assignments. I have a better understanding of how to use

rhetoric in my favor, and persuade or even just inform an audience in a way that they can

understand. I have grown as an individual in my technological proficiency by stepping out of my

comfort zone and doing projects that I have never done. I overcame the barriers of formulas

taught to me by the education system, and have a grasp on what makes a conclusion that stands

out rather than frustrates. I am not a perfect student, barely even a good one, but this class was
worth the hours and work. At the end of the day, I now know what College Writing truly entails,

and this class has showed the expectations of what is to come in the near future.