Kerrigan Peters

Mrs. Thomas
UWRT 1102-017
1 December 2015
Final Reflection Draft
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.
~ The song that I chose is Let it Be by The Beatles because its my favorite song and I actually
have it tattooed on my foot because its the song I always listen to to get me through difficult
times. When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of
wisdom, let it be. I would listen to this song whenever I would get stressed out about the
upcoming drafts that were due and it would calm me down and even clear my head. Finally, I
chose it because sometimes when Id be writing and would get stuck, the only way to get
productive again was to take a break then come back to it. I would have to let it be for a little
bit in order for me to clear my head in order for me to form new ideas for my writing
2. If you were to teach this class, what ideas would you emphasis?
~ If I were to teach this class I would emphasize the importance of annotating and understanding
readings. I would also try to review citations because I know that personally my high school and
previous writing classes didnt really go over those so I struggled with that while writing my
thesis. Mainly, I would emphasis on the actual thesis itself because I feel like I didnt really know
what I was doing up until I got peer feedback on it. Maybe going through the individual steps
with the paper and helping the class pick out topics would have made it a little easier and more
interesting.

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?).
~ One of the main things I realized is that focus is a major part of an essay. In some of my other
classes, I tend to go off topic a lot. For my thesis, with my first draft I kind of had my thoughts
written all over the page and some werent related to others. Another thing would be I now have
a better understanding of keeping my audience in mind while writing my papers. Since most of
my sources were from psychological studies, I knew I had to reword some of the information
into something that everyone would understand since not everyone has taken a psychology class
before. Finally, I did a good job of receiving feedback and understanding what I needed to
change. Through each step of submissions I feel like my thesis improved significantly.
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?)
~ My critical reading has improved significantly. I never really annotated any readings before
and didnt realize how beneficial annotating is. Although it was very tedious, whenever we
annotated readings from our course pack, it helped me understand what I was reading better.
When I was looking for sources for my annotated bibs, I would read each source and think to
myself, Will this fit with the overall flow of my paper? As I previously mentioned, focus has
been an issue for me in the past so I used critical reading to help me find ways to tie in outside
sources with my own voice.
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 is a bit unconventional but it works well for me. For my first drafts, I
tend to just write my thoughts down on the paper and meet whatever requirements may be asked.
After I get my peer reviews or comments, thats when I go back through and edit/revise my
paper. Also, just by talking with one of my classmates about how I could have more focus on my
paper and this caused me to rethink my entire paper and improve it. Finally, since we had to turn
in multiple drafts, I was able to figure out what exactly were the weaker parts of my essay and
how I needed to fix them for improvement.
6. Provide at least three examples of your knowledge of conventions (ex. sentence level
changes, MLA citations).
~My main thing, as I had mentioned before, was learning how to properly do citations. Before
this class I had never known about the hanging indent rule for citations. Also, because we had to
read our essays aloud, I was able to catch which sentences didnt work well together. This made
me think about how I could fix my sentence structure to make my ideas stronger as well. Another
thing was with our annotated bibliographies, we were taught to pay attention to repetitive phrases
which I definitely paid attention to in my final thesis. Finally, by looking over the They Say, I
Say templates, I learned new ways to introduce quotes and to properly explain their importance.
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) Everything involved in writing has to do with making choices. We had to choose which
topic of inquiry we had to do and which sources we felt would help with our paper and our
annotated bibs.

B) The most important think for providing commentary is to make sure that its constructive.
When someone is going over my paper, its not helpful when they just go through and add in
missed comments. They need to make comments on the actual ideas of my paper otherwise I
wont be able to improve it. When I peers commented on my paper, I realized that I needed to go
through and take out some unnecessary sentences because it made me sound like I was rambling.
Also, I was told to make a more interesting title. Although its not the most original title, my new
one for my thesis is more specific to what I am actually writing about. Finally, I was told to find
more sources and how to cite them into my paper. This I definitely paid attention because I was
able to find really good and credible sources to make a paper that I am really proud of.