Rowen's Writing Self-Assessment

Looking at my initial self-assessment, I personally feel like I didn't improve that much. It's hard to tell though, given the amount of writing we've done in this class. I wanted to become more efficient in my writing, and to an extent I think I did accomplish that, but not in the way I expected. I wanted to learn to effectively communicate ideas without being to flowery, but I think the way I improved the most throughout this semester was generating specific ideas that were easier to communicate efficiently.

I am very detail-oriented when it comes to writing, so much so in fact that I often get lost in those details. I spend way too much introducing topics and concepts that don't matter and aren't necessarily relevant to what I'm talking about. Since I developed a habit early on of developing a thesis based on research, rather than the other way around, my thesis development reflected the research I was doing. I learned a lot of really interesting, valuable things, but often I think my papers were more explorations of the things I learned than actual analysis. As such, they were often large, unwieldy things that didn't really go anywhere valuable. The lack of payoff  I think contributed to how wordy they seemed. It seems funny to me now because in my original self-assessment I said "While I am confident in my ability to arrange ideas on a macro level . . . I am less confident in my ability to arrange those individual pieces" it seems like what I was struggling with was actual what I was confident in- my details were often fine, but they didn't lead me anywhere, and since they didn't lead me anywhere, they felt fluffy and useless.

Professor Burton helped me to understand better the ways in which my theses were lacking in our individual meetings. At each meeting we held, he pointed out the ways in which I introduced concepts didn't necessarily communicate what I wanted them to, and therefore made the rest of the paper quite confusing. In the last paper, I made a concerted effort to create a focused and clear introduction and thesis, which I think is what enabled me to write the rest of the paper. Writing it the first time was insanely difficult; each sentence felt like I was pulling teeth to even get an idea onto the document, and it never felt right or good enough. Having a clear direction and a solid body of research to back me up really helped in this regard.

Regarding informal sources, I have very mixed feelings. I think one of the things that inhibited my ability to talk about my text in our penultimate paper was the reliance on informal sources. Since there wasn't a lot said on my text, and what little was said about the genre as well as the text didn't really add anything new or interesting to the discussion (the conversation about AI has kind of been done to death), informal sources didn't really add very much. They were much more helpful in the final paper. Even though I didn't use all of them, seeing how community opinions and thoughts reflected or conflicted with concepts in the research was really interesting.

Annie's Writing Self-Assessment

My favorite part of writing my final paper was bringing various sources together and seeing how they relate to each other. It was really fun to pull from many different places, and I just enjoyed watching how my sources came together in my final paper.

Looking back on my initial self-assessment I feel like I’ve come to look forward to and appreciate editing and revision which is a big turnaround for me from the beginning of semester. I’ve learn to take these steps more seriously and utilize them in my writing process. I a lot more time for this now when I am composing a paper.

I think where I would like to improve is more quickly working my way through writer’s block. Meaning if I can’t find the right path to follow with my essay from the start, it can take a long time to get going and to bring things together cohesively. I’ve learned some strategies from this class about getting around that which have been helpful, but I feel like at times I get in my own way. I heard this quote recently that talks about how in a good story, you get out of the way and let it tell itself, and I think to some extent this can be applied to academic writing. I love outlining but sometimes I just struggle in the transfer. In the future, after I’ve done my planning, I want to focus on just getting out of my own way and writing. If I get stuck somewhere I want to be able to just more quickly move forward and work around it.

I feel like this semester has helped me deep dive into the researching process. I have a lot more avenues, a lot more tools in my belt, for finding sources and doing good research. I think it was very helpful learning to incorporate informal sources into our research. Especially for well-known pieces of literature I feel that informal sources are important to take into account. Since a lot of my papers were based on a more obscure work, it was hard to find a lot of variety in informal sources but using this avenue helped to me to find some paintings that helped me a lot in my papers. There are some other things that I’ve come to discover are really important in my writing process. One of these is to outline my ideas specifically with pen and paper, doing this seems to just make things click for me and helps me to be more cohesive in my writing. I also have been converted to reading my papers out loud during the editing and revision process. Reading out loud and also talking things out as I was writing my papers helped me to find clarity in my writing. Also during this semester, I realized how much I enjoyed writing personal essays and I would like to use this mode again in the future. Going forward I plan on using these new habits in my future writing.

Hannah's Writing Self-Assessment

What I most dreaded about my final paper was actually what turned out to be the most enjoyable. I had never incorporated non-academic sources into a paper before and so I was really apprehensive to try. Yet I found that when I began to look for inspiration in pictures and other media I was able to come up with some really original ideas that made me even more excited to continue to write my paper. Although not all sources were quoted in my paper, there were many that guided me to the claim that I wanted to make. I am definitely going to continue to use the internet as a place to seek inspiration for future papers. It also inspired me to seek out adaptions of the different books that I really love, even if I am not currently writing about them. It is really interesting to me to be able to understand other people’s interpretations of a text.

At the beginning of the semester I noticed that I was struggling with transitions in my writing. I do feel that I have improved in this aspect of my writing as I have been able to be more social in my writing process. It really helped to have someone else give feedback and help me notice different places that might be unclear. I especially felt like I was able to use good transitions after I read my paper out loud. As I read vocally to someone else I was hyper-aware of the clarity in my paper and was able to add transitions where needed. 

I feel that this semester I was able to gain a lot of feedback about supporting my thesis in my papers. Although I felt somewhat confident in my ability to provide analysis and support in my papers at the beginning of the semester I learned that I can continue to improve on this aspect. I want to work on this in my future papers and be able to fully convince my audience of my argument because of the support in my paper. 

Overall, this semester helped me branch out from my usual writing style. It helped me realize that there are more ways than just rereading and editing my papers to get feedback and improve my writing. It helped me engage in dialogue about writing and about editing, which I realized I really like doing! It is fun to be able to talk about ideas and get excited about my paper when others are excited about it also. I look forward to using the things that I have learned in this class in my future semester here at BYU and beyond. 

Alyssa's Writing Self-Assessment

Over the course of this semester, my writing has certainly improved. Back in January, I noted that my main weakness was my inability to really sit down and put words on the page in a timely manner before the due date. While I definitely still struggled with that aspect of the writing process, I was more focused this semester on making it less of a struggle. The thing that helped me the most to overcome this weakness was writing down what my primary claim was for each paper. This gave me a clear direction to take my ideas, and made it easier for me to make an outline and talk about the most important parts of my argument with the help of specific sources that supported what I was saying. In this last paper especially, I feel that my ideas were more clearly outlined because I had a clear thesis statement, making it possible for me to start the essay with a better sense of direction and organization. 

Though I made considerable progress in focusing my ideas and hence in making it easier for me to find the motivation to start writing, I found that I still have other areas to improve upon in the writing process. In particular, I saw that I have the tendency to write long, flowing sentences without a break in between to let my reader take a mental breath of air. This is a challenge that I’ve been aware of, but it hadn’t been quite so obvious to me as when I was editing this final paper. I had to cut out several sections to make my paragraphs more comprehensible and concise. 

One of the  most enjoyable parts about researching and writing the final paper for this class for me was learning how to use the resources available to us through the BYU library, as well as through the other non-scholarly sources on the internet. I loved finding books on obscure aspects of Anglo-Saxon society that enriched my understanding of how the text I analyzed fit in to the community, and it was a true blessing to find the full performance of a play that related directly to the subjects I focused on. It was really fun to read and watch other people’s interpretations and reactions to the literature I was studying, especially when the people talking about it were just including it in their regular discourse. 

Something that I really think helped me to formulate my ideas about the texts I analyzed in the final paper was just talking about it with my friends and family. Even though I already had the ideas in my head, it helped to explain them to someone else and get their feedback and perspective. It also made me feel like I wasn’t just writing for the sake of writing, but that someone out there might have genuine interest in what I was writing about. Their support and enthusiasm made me get even more excited about my paper so that it felt less like an assignment for a class and more like a personal project that I wanted to invest in.

Maddi's Writing Self-Assessment

Throughout the semester my writing developed in many ways, but I think the most substantial improvement was that it became more focused towards my ideas. I learned how to incorporate many different types of sources and arguments, as well as theories, to enhance my argument and make it more focused on the subject, while still maintaining my style of writing. At the beginning of the semester I expressed that I could easily stay organized with research papers, but that a formulaic approach submerged my voice within my papers. With being able to use a variety of sources and theories, my ideas were able to flourish well beyond a strict formalist approach. I feel that I learned how to blend professionalism with my style in my writings!

The most enjoyable part of drafting my final paper was seeing all the things I had practiced throughout the semester come together. I felt very uncomfortable using contemporary and informal sources at the beginning of the semester, and it was fun to see my final product and how they enhanced my argument by adding depth to it. This type of source didn’t seem to fit the professional lens that I viewed research papers with, and I wasn’t sure how to incorporate them effectively. However, I learned how to use them to modernize my arguments, and to introduce me to different claims that I previously wouldn’t have considered. I used blogs and forums, pictures and YouTube videos, as well as play reviews to bring shape into my argument about “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Moving forward, I’ll be much more willing to bring these aspects into my writing. I was surprised to see how they didn’t distract from my professional voice in my paper, but as I began to be more familiar with using them, they made my paper feel relatable and current.

I was also unsure how to use form to create an intriguing argument within my research, but it ended up being a large focus of my final paper, as I became more comfortable articulating how the author portrayed different ideas within the text. Learning how to use general sources helped me gain confidence in this region. I do feel this is one of my strongest skills in my writing now! However, I also know I’m weak in my social aspects of writing. It is still easy for me to keep my head down and work, however I did get better at branching out. I used comments from my peers on my blog posts, discussions we had in class and through our peer reviews, and even the librarian to help me develop my paper. These resources definitely helped my paper a lot, and really encouraged me to bring my voice into my writing, and I am beginning to feel more comfortable using them. Unfortunately, I do see myself being more hesitant to use these resources in the future, therefore I want to develop greater habits of being social with my writing!

Dylan's Writing Self Assessment

In this class, one of the most important things that I have learned, in my opinion, is the ability to properly plan out and write an essay. For me, this means setting apart a certain window of time for me to write and then just writing. Too often I spend way more time than I need to working on my rough draft. In this class I learned how to simply write and worry about fixing all of the little things afterward. I honestly believe that this has not only helped me write faster, but better as I left behind my worries about what was on the paper at the beginning of the process and instead just writing at first.
In my research process, I've enjoyed learning so much more about how to do research well. Before this class, my research was mostly just searching through the main database and choosing what looked good. Not only have I learned how to find sources more efficiently, but I've learned what sources are actually valuable sources for my research. Just gaining that useful knowledge has been fun for me and I know that makes me sound like a nerd, but I made it to college somehow.
Looking back on where I was at the beginning of the semester, I've already improved greatly at my skill to write rough drafts and research more effectively. Even just my skill at writing has improved overall just from writing so much. I still need to work on my ability to stay on task in a longer paper though. For example in a long paper I have a tendency to go off on tangents in order to fill in all of the space that I need to fill in. I could see myself doing this in my last paper as well. Even when I recognize it, I still struggle because I can't tell when I am going off on a tangent or just expanding on my argument. I have gotten better at balancing context and analysis though.
Through the semester, I have really enjoyed some of the aspects of our social writing process. Sharing my rough draft has been extremely helpful in my writing process and has made sure that my final drafts actually sound like final drafts. Mostly the rest of the social writing processes have helped me stay on schedule with the essays. It was difficult sometimes to benefit from looking at other people's processes because oftentimes we all approached things very differently. Although I still learned things through this, in my opinion it wasn't very significant. With online or informal sources I found it very difficult to use this in my essays. I could use them, a lot of times with a lot of effort, as a jumping point for other more formal research or topics, but for me it was very difficult to use them for brainstorming.

Matt’s Writing Self-Assessment

If there is anything I know about writing, it is that I don’t know everything. This semester I still feel like I don’t know everything, but that is okay because I know more than when I started. In fact, I can see the difference between my papers at the beginning of the semester and final research paper we turned in. One of my strengths coming into this semester was synthesis. I felt that carried through to my research paper and as practice does, it helped improve my synthesis even more. My weakness I wrote about at the beginning of the semester was reaching page requirements. I still feel like I struggle meeting page requirements, but I feel like I improved from where I started. However, the things I improved on this semester are things I didn’t know I had to improve on.

For example, I had no idea the variety of sources we had at our disposal when writing a paper. I was amazed at all the different kinds of sources I found for my research paper and how each source brought something unique to the paper that another source could not have. A great example of this is an image. An image is such a good way to help readers visualize an aspect of your paper that would have been difficult to describe. I also learned how to use informal sources to better my own understanding of my topic but also how those informal sources could help a reader gain a stronger base of my topic as well.

I also learned the benefit of talking about my writing. I never shared what I was writing about with my wife for my parents. But throughout this whole semester I tried to share my topics and things I have learned through my writing to my family members. Doing so has brought an increased passion and more solidified learning for writing this semester. I talked about my research paper with my wife and not only was I able to draw a few good points from our discussion, but realized that when I went back to continue writing it, the ideas came more easily because I spent time thinking about it outside of my usual writing process.

And this brings me to one of the most important things I learned this semester. I learned to improve my writing process. This semester and class encouraged me a lot to think about my writing process, something I had never done before. I used to jump straight into my paper with little thought of what I was going to write beforehand and hope it all came together. Now, I spend a significant amount of time prewriting so that when it comes time to write, my thoughts are already organized, and I already have a direction with my paper.

This semester was instrumental in helping me become a better writer. Not only did I improve on my past strengths and weaknesses, but it helped me discover other parts of my writing that needed work. I am a stronger writer now that I can use a variety of sources more effectively, speak openly about my writing and use those discussions to help fuel my writing process, and have developed a stronger writing process that prepares me before I even begin to start typing up my thoughts onto a word document.

Ariel's Writing Self-Assessment

Regarding my writing, the biggest thing that’s changed throughout the course is how I format the paper itself. I’ve never been aware of this, but because of high school AP English, I found I default to writing in the format: introduction-paragraph-paragraph-paragraph-conclusion. It sounds dumb, I know. That’s how I’ve always written and how I’ve gone through college writing essays so far. No English or other professor has ever called me out on it before, and it’s probably one of the reasons I don’t like writing what I’m “forced” to write, why I’ve always preferred creative writing. Not only was it fun to have the freedom to write an essay on any book/play/poem we chose to write on – which did help me write this semester – but I was able to recognize how I write the exact same format for every essay I write since high school, and that I can write more than that. With the amount of sources we had to find in the final essay, I realized I could only use that many sources if I had more than just three body paragraphs, and had to find more than just three topics to analyze. Starting a new paragraph to allow for more sources also helped reduce the amount of repetition in my essays – although, somethings will never change, and I still do this. But without the constricting format of just maintaining a total of five paragraphs, I think my weakness of not liking what I’m told to write has decreased. If I can’t choose a topic, at least having multiple paragraphs can allow for more variety in what to write about in future essays.

My source-collecting habits are still the same: I found myself having much less difficulty making a massive Word document full of URL’s and quick side-notes by each. So, that’s something I will have to work on.

However, I liked how we spent time branching out of just peer-reviewed sources. In the past, I always hated that aspect of being “told” what to write, knowing I could find good blog posts covering my topics. Being allowed to take advantage of them was so much fun, and it was easier to find peer-reviewed sources after finding a great informal source for the final essay. I mean, I did get a little distracted at times, but the distraction meant I was at least still thinking about my topic AND having fun.

Being social helped me realize where my thesis was underdeveloped, and when I couldn’t describe my topic to someone, I knew I had to keep formatting it and saying it out loud until I could share it confidently.

Overall, I need to record my sources in a better format eventually, but my writing has evolved from formulaic to more substantial. I’m no longer able to just start writing an essay from intro to conclusion. Now, I do take time to find a variety of topics to write about, and I enjoy essays a little more. I hope that in the future I can also take advantage of informal sources again. But, I think I have gotten better after breaking out of the AP mold.

Thank you for everything!
-Ariel

Magda's Writing Self-Assessment

Looking back at my first writing self-assessment, I think that I still have a tendency to ramble, but I have gotten more careful about repetition within that rambling. I have made a concentrated effort to use my words wisely, and I find myself now cutting out entire paragraphs that have nothing to do with what I'm talking about, which is something I was much too scared to do before. I would still like to do better, though, about using less words in general to convey what I want to say. I think I have also gotten better at actually analyzing within my essays, because I tend to want to write persuasively, but by my final essay I think I did a good job of analyzing character and genre. I learned to use analysis to prove a point about the story instead of just evidence in the text to prove a point about some bigger philosophical question (which is what I am often tempted to do).

Something that has been really enlightening during this semester is the idea of social research. I've always known that I do better on papers when I'm able to talk my ideas out with someone close to me, but I have never before considered it as a research approach. Making an effort to throw around ideas and talk through my thesis before putting a proper idea down on paper has been incredibly helpful and has also turned homework assignments into something that I was actually excited to write about. I was able to find ideas that I actually believed in and topics that actually interested me, and that made writing about them a lot more enjoyable. It has also helped me to know where to begin in the writing process. Usually I get stuck in the beginning of writing an essay, but just taking time to talk out my ideas that are not quite organized gave me an easy and stress-free way to start organizing my ideas. By the time I was done talking about my ideas, I usually had enough of a direction that I wanted to go in that I could start researching and outlining my paper.

I also became a lot better at researching as a result of first doing social research. Instead of spending time mindlessly searching the internet for ideas, by the end of social research I already had an idea I wanted to run with, so it made it simpler to find sources that would help me write about my idea. I also really enjoyed finding media sources to help me talk about a more contemporary work in my last paper. It was something that I had never really tackled before, so it seemed a little new to me while working on my second paper, but I was able to find a lot for my final paper, and I found ways to integrate them really well. Finding and using media sources taught me that writing literary criticism doesn't have to be constricted to a classroom setting, but it's a thing that people write in the real world, and one need not constrain themselves to using only one kind of source when we have so many available to us in this day and age.

Savannah's Writing Self-Assessments

This past semester, I feel like I have grown in a unique way in my writing.  This class has truly taught me so much about the process of writing. I feel like we didn’t focus as much on the grammatical, more editing, sides of the writing process which I truly appreciated as I feel like that’s something we should all know by now. I also think that the editing process is the less important side of the writing process, and this class focused more on the topics and analysis in your writing. I loved how we were able to chose our books and topics which allowed me to cultivate more creativity in my writing for the first time. Nothing was very forced, which made it so much easier to enjoy the writing process.

I believe this is why I enjoyed the final paper as much as I did. I loved how we were encouraged at first to just explore topics in obscure places like discussion boards, Pinterest, and google images. I felt like because of this instead of choosing topics that I thought would be the easiest and fastest to write about, I was writing about things that I genuinely was interested in researching and  learning about. 

I do feel like I still procrastinated writing my  final essay for way too long, but it also was a very busy time of life for me. I did stretch out the writing process for longer than normal which was stress relieving when I still procrastinated finishing off my essays. I felt like for the first time I was truly emotionally attached to my topic and was invested in proving my thesis. I feel like it makes your paper more interesting to other people when they can see how important it is to you and how passionate you are about it.

I still wish I had created more time for myself to  go through rough drafts and edit and proofread my final literary essay, so this is something I would like to improve upon in my future essays. I feel like this class taught me a lot more about including various literary theories in my writing which I hadn’t done before in other classes. I feel like being social in my writing helped me some, but not a ton because we all had different topics. I think because of this variety in topics it made it difficult to give good advice on other people’s topics when I wasn’t really very educated on them. I do think it helped sometimes to say out loud what I was writing about because it forced me to really know what I was at least considering writing about.  I feel like using the non-scholarly resources was very helpful for the first few parts of writing because it gave me a lot of background research and got my mind thinking on different topics, but past that I think it may have been somewhat distracting because when I was feeling lazy it was easier to find non-scholarly resources and use those in my paper.

Jaidyn's Writing Self-Assessment

In my original academic writing self-evaluation, I wrote that my least favorite part of research papers is doing the actual research. I have to say (and I’m not making this up for the sake of this post) that researching for the final paper actually wasn’t horrible. The resources that Dr. Burton and Robert Means shared with us really helped me feel comfortable doing research. I didn’t get overwhelmed by information, and I was able to look at a variety of sources– newspapers, articles, and ebooks. 

I feel like the idea for my paper started as a tiny seed and grew as I actually found sources. With that said, I’m not sure if this was the best way to formulate my claim. If I had had a definite idea of exactly what I wanted to say from the beginning, my research would have been more focused and efficient. Of course, because the research process is not necessarily independent of the drafting process, I was still continuing to find sources even while I wrote. In the future, I’ll practice developing a powerful claim early on so that I have a clearer idea about what supporting information I’ll need.

One thing I wish I had been able to do better was find the proper balance between sources and my own commentary. I hate feeling like my writing is just an amalgamation of other people’s ideas, connected by a few words of my own. On the other hand, sometimes I worry that if I don’t have enough support, my papers won’t be credible or mature. I’m still working on finding a good middle ground. I think maybe if I made formal analysis a bigger part of my writing, I would feel more like a valid contributor to my own work.

Being social with the writing process did help me, especially because I am inclined to be very private about the things I write. The peer critiques we did were nice, because sometimes I view my writing like my child– I don’t want to recognize its flaws, and need someone else to do it for me. I wish that I had been more social with my research– to be honest, when I came home a few weeks ago, a lot of my motivation drained away. However, I know that I’ll be doing a lot of writing in the future, and I plan to use social research as a means to gather and test ideas. 

I loved that I could use informal online sources for my writing in this class. When I was a kid learning how to write reports, I would google random websites to use for my “research,” but by the time I got to college I realized that googling doesn’t often give you valid sources. However, it’s been really cool to learn how to properly use informal sources so that they enrich my writing instead of cheapening it.

Overall, I feel like this final paper taught me a lot about the writing process. Regardless of how well it actually turned out, I’ve learned enough skills to be certain that next time I have to do a similar project, my claim will be stronger, my research more relevant, and my socialization more impactful.  

James' Writing Self-Assessment

As I went back through the papers I’ve written throughout this semester, I can see the improvement I’ve made as a writer. Looking back at my initial self-evaluation post, I said, “One of my weaknesses in academic writing is my tendency to ramble. I am not very good at outlining. Because of this, my papers often end up scatterbrained and difficult to follow.” I’ve made a lot of progress in regards to what I originally considered a weakness. What helped me with this was the format of the papers we wrote. The majority of the papers we wrote—and especially the final paper—required a lot of pre-writing because we had to pull in ideas from so many different sources. I could have pretty easily written a 3000 word essay on Frankenstein just using the text and the ideas already in my head. But in addition to that, I had to pull in ideas from two informal sources, two general sources, four scholarly sources, and feedback from my teacher and classmates. The result was a bit of a Frankenstein—pun intended. It was a hodgepodge of ideas from all sorts of different places, and it was really difficult to get them to blend together without feeling like a disjointed collage. But the fact that it was hard was really good for me. The end result was that I had to do a lot more prewriting—a lot more brainstorming, research, and outlining—to get it to work. Whether it did work is up to the reader of my paper, but it was a good exercise. The average amount of time I spent prewriting per paper in this class far exceeded the prewriting I’ve done in previous classes, and I hope that the result is that my papers were more organized, more cohesive, and less rambly than usual.

The one thing I can’t honestly say I enjoyed about this class was the social writing aspect. I don’t really like interacting with other human beings. I suppose that sounds kind of mean, but at least it’s honest. Having struggled with social anxiety for most of my life, I like to do my writing on my own.

Looking forward, however, I definitely learned some things about my own writing process that I intend to employ in the future. I have learned the value of outlining. I think my essays in the past tended to be rambly because I kind of discovered what I was trying to argue as I wrote. The more I wrote, the more my own ideas became clear to me. But now, I’ve learned how to outline better. It takes a lot of time—which is why I didn’t do it before. However, it saves a lot of time in the editing process later on to have a clear, distinct idea of what I’m trying to argue before I start writing. I intend to use the more extensive outlining habits I developed in this class in my future academic writing.

Sophie's Writing Self-Assessment

I think that my writing has developed quite positively over the course of this semester. I felt that the biggest help was the way we really got into our topics through deadlines that forced us to draft at least a couple times. I usually don’t go through a paper so many times, and by sticking with the same topic for my final paper as with Lit Analysis 2, I was able to really dig deep into both my topic and my writing. I think that the fact that I had already come up with my idea/thesis in the second paper made my writing of the final paper a lot more enjoyable since my least favorite part of writing a paper is coming up with the idea. I have learned that once I really narrow in on a topic, I actually enjoy the research that comes along with it, and I like to prove my point in a paper. I also liked the specificity I was able to employ when it came to earlier papers, like the “Ozymandias” paper. I got better at digging into the formalist aspects of text while also keeping in mind general characteristics, like genre.

It’s funny looking back at my initial self-assessment: I wrote that my biggest weakness was coming up with ideas, and I said the same thing in the previous paragraph without even realizing. I guess I’m still not loving the beginning process of writing a paper, but I learned some good techniques through this class. For example, I found the inspiration for my final paper through blogs and other informal media sources. I have learned that this is a great way to generate ideas, even for scholarly research. In the future, I will make sure to search through non-scholarly sources in order to find inspiration for papers that I’m trying to write. I also think that I have improved in staying focused on a claim, especially in doing so in a longer research paper.

This class has really taught me how to dive into English research. Because my major is actually Political Science and English is one of my minors, I am a lot more experienced with conducting political science-related research. But, I have found that there are many helpful databases and resources to aid in research related to literature. Through my final paper topic on the environment and climate change, I discovered that I can use literature to learn about things that I am passionate about through a different lens than I would through other disciplines. For example, if I was researching the environment through political science, I would probably find a ton of resources about partisan policies and the international struggle to alleviate climate change. Yet, by researching the environment through the lens of The Handmaid’s Tale, I was able to learn more about the topic in the less-partisan context of literature, in a way that reflects the possible future of the Earth. 

Kayla's Writing Self-Assessment

My writing process has developed greatly throughout the semester. At first, I was not a fan of how much drafting we were required to do as a class. However, my feelings changed when I realized how much easier it was to compose a final paper when I had already completed the majority of the research. The most enjoyable part of researching for my final paper was finding non-scholarly sources that helped me to develop my ideas in a deeper way. I found newspaper articles from the 1960s and Spotify playlists that helped me find my voice in what I was trying to portray. In my initial self-assessment, I wrote that my drafting was weak as I tended to just write a paper and turn it in without any revising or previous drafts. I have greatly improved upon that. One thing I noticed, however, was I felt like I was struggling to tie together all my sources in my final paper - something I had written was a struggle for me at the beginning of the semester. Clearly, I could have used more practice in that arena. The social aspect of writing was also heightened in this class as opposed to other English classes I have taken. Being accountable for another student helped me to manage my time wisely, and the feedback was generally helpful in further development of my ideas. I liked knowing I only had an hour before I had to report back to another student about how much work I had completed. Overall, I know that this class stretched me and especially my writing process. I had a lot going on in my life this semester, as we all did, and especially now with COVID-19. But the way this class was organized helped me to be able to keep up with the required assignments in a reasonable timeline.