Lanham1

Semester Reflection
Dear Lyra,
Throughout this course, Ive faced several challenges. One of these is simply the
fluidity of my writing. Due to my inability to sit for long durations to work on a single
essay, the final product is often very choppy and needs heavy revising to make it more
cohesive. For instance, at one point I had nine different one or two sentence paragraphs
for my Rogerian. To fix this, I developed the habit of typing [insert transition] at the
end of a paragraph to make sure I address it again. Another way I remedied this challenge
was by taking your advice and going to the Writing Center, where I was forced to sit for
greater durations. Furthermore, the Writing Center also provided me with someone to
proofread my essay and help make it more fluent.
Similarly, the Writing Center also helped me with another challenge I faced
throughout the end of the course: limiting my essay to the word count. By the end of the
course, I had many sources and knew a great deal about my topic. Hence, when I was
given an assignment, I had a lot to say with a limited word count. The Writing Center
often helped shorten any assignments by removing all of the fluff, as did many peers
throughout the class. In your class itself, I also learned how to cut out the fluff and stick
to my major points. Cutting out fluff helped me reduce my Rogerian by about 200 words,
which helped me come closer to the word limit.
Not only did I cut out fluff to improve my writing, but I also changed the way I
approach essays. At the beginning of the year, such as for the Inquiry Paper, I wrote the
introduction, body, then conclusion for an essay; however, mid-semester I realized how
terrible I am at writing introductions without the main body of the essay done. For the
CAP I decided to take the following approach instead: write the body paragraphs first,
match the partition/introduction to these, then write a conclusion. I now prefer this
approach, even though you didnt personally recommend it. However, one way I
improved my writing that you did teach us is the addition of rhetorical context. Literally
from the first class, you stressed how significant rhetorical context is and, as a result, I
will remember it forever. Its very simple to add and can help establish ethos. For
instance, in my CAP I stated Elisabeth Mason, CEO and co-founder of Single Stop USA
and organization that helps people attain higher education, presents. Even though it
seems like a minor detail, the reader now knows that shes a stakeholder and her opinion
matters.
Considering how useful incorporating concepts throughout the course (such as
CRAP) have been in essays, I would say Im particularly proud of learning and properly
utilizing them. One golden example is as follows from my Inquiry Paper: In an article
posted on College View titled The Benefits of Having a College Education, author Jeff
McGuire, a graduate from MIT, explains the benefits of having a college education are
manifold (para. 1). This is an example of both establishing rhetorical context and an intext citation. I am also proud of my mastery of STAR (Sufficient, Typical, Accurate,
Reliable), MEAL (Main Idea, Evidence, Analysis, Link), and CRAP (Contrast,
Repetition, Alignment, Proximity).
However, I still do have some things I need to work on. Even though I believe
you have helped my fluidity improve, I still think theres still room for improvement. Im
going to continue to implement the strategies already recommended to me and keep an

Lanham2
open mind in regards to other potential strategies for improvement. Furthermore, I would
like to rely less on fluff while typing my essay. Its very inefficient to add a lot of fluff,
only to remove it upon revising the essay; plus, removing the fluff makes the essay less
cohesive.
Overall, I conceptualized the website as a series of pages/subpages corresponding
to my CAP. For example, the About/Background pages correspond to the introduction
and exigence section of the CAP, while the Digital Forum page corresponds to body of
the CAP. However, I drastically changed my CAP to accommodate the digital forum,
which has a less scholarly audience. To ensure that I didnt copy directly from the CAP to
my digital forum, I refused to use the copy-paste commands and instead re-typed all of
the key concepts. Even though I remained focused on the main points for my CAP, for the
digital forum I remained focused on the main main points. I had to simplify a lot of
concepts and shorten text since my audience has changed to the general public. I also had
to bold key words and use titles/subtitles to make it easier to follow and ensure that
someone whos only skimming still understands the main points.
However, my website wouldnt be easy to follow without revising my CAP before
transforming it into website form. After receiving your suggestions, I decided to revise
my CAP, transition it into website-form, then revise the website as necessary. One of your
comments, shouldnt Hosansky go before your rebuttal, made me realize that my
organization on my CAP wasnt the best and its crucial that I fix it before even
attempting to build a website. Another flaw I fixed from my CAP was having various
verb tenses for my sources arguments even though they should all be present-tense.
Yet even after fixing my CAP, peer evaluations gave me more revisions to make. I
previously hadnt considered it, but it was recommended to me that I should have some
information on the homepage to grab the viewers attention immediately. Furthermore, I
also didnt explicitly state the exigency of the issue and only implied it. My peers also
realized that I was using gray, not black, text on my white background. Adjusting this
made the contrast much better. A lot of the other peer feedback involved criticisms of
how I wasnt done with my website less (I was missing information even though the
pages were there), but I still kept it all in mind while I was finalizing the website.
Fortunately, I received all of the information from the peer evaluations that I desired, but
I still had another friend peer-review my final website to make sure there werent any
minor flaws. As far as reviewing my peers projects, it was a tremendous help. It made
me think about my own site, especially alignment of text since all of my peers at least had
one flaw regarding this. I ended up looking at everyones website and borrowing any
concepts that I really liked, such as hyperlinking the titles of my works cited and adding
my other documents from throughout the semester. If I had a single recommendation for
you, it would be to keep the peer evaluations; theyve helped tremendously on every
assignment!
Anyways, youre a great teacher (or should I say rockstar?) and Ive enjoyed
having you. Best of luck in life! :)
Sincerely,
Jordan Lanham