Appelberg 1

Corinne Appelberg
Deby Jizi
UWRT 1102-009
5 May 2016
Reflection Letter
Dear Reader,
As the time comes for my freshman year to come to an end, I look back to reflect on all
the valuable lessons I learned throughout my first year at UNCC. During my fall semester I took
UWRT 1101, followed by UWRT 1102 in the spring. UWRT 1102 quickly became my favorite
class of my spring semester because I was able to express my thoughts and use my creativity.
For our final project we were to make an EPortfolio, which presents a complete reflection
on all my work from the course. My Eportfolio allows me to share with you all my hard work,
reveals my progress throughout the semester, and shows the progression of my major projects.
Making my Eportfolio has been a blast and also gave me time to view my work and reflect on
my semester in the course. It was a great way to present my work, while it was fun making it
creative and personal.
While putting together my EPortfolio I was able to visually notice the progression of all
my major projects, while also noticing how I have grown as a writer throughout the past few
months. On each separate section on my EPortfolio, I included multiple drafts of my essays and
any prewriting that went into the production of my papers/projects, which shows the complete
process of my projects. My Eportfolio includes my personal essay on What Happiness Means to
Me, my inquiry project, and my genre project that shows in a series of events, starting with any
notes or prewriting, followed by any drafts that were written, and concluding with my final

Appelberg 2
paper. My What Happiness Means to Me paper turned out to be one of my favorites since it
was a true representation of how I view happiness. It gave me the ability to share my personal
opinions and made me realize how much happiness in my life means to me. I also created a
section on happiness that shows all the double entry journals, and all in-class activities that
contributed to my growing knowledge of what I had learned about happiness. The double
journal entries really allowed me to open my mind up on the topic of happiness and let me
express all my views. My last page reveals two of my papers written in other courses, showing
you my additional works and letting me reflect on those works as well.
The creation of my EPortfolio allowed me to recognize my writing strengths and
weaknesses and allowed me to set future goals for myself as a writer. I realize now that I have
made minor mistakes on my formatting, can sometimes get confused with how to use in-text
citations, and can also struggle with beginning my papers. Fortunately, writing papers all
semester in MLA format has given me more practice on how to format correctly, I learned more
about how to use in-text citations and where to find good references, and our daily free writes
helped me speed up the slow production of my papers introduction. I also noticed that I have
become a stronger writer all together and have grown as a more cognitive thinker and questioner
as well. Lots of group work also allowed me to learn how to formulate better questions to ask
others, while the discussion blog taught me how dig deeper into the topic and become a better
thinker.
My favorite assignment throughout the semester would have to be my inquiry project.
After looking at my EPortfolio pages and being able to reflect on the process as a whole, I
realized that this project allowed me to become more informed about Anorexia and Bulimia

Appelberg 3
Nervosa and also let me express my personal belief on the topic. The genre project allowed me to
share my newly gained knowledge on the disorders with others in order to raise awareness.
During the inquiry process, there were several stages to go through before producing my
final paper. I had already had an idea since from the beginning that I wanted to explore a topic on
eating disorders. But, after I started thinking deeper into what I wanted to discover, I knew I
wanted to research the contributing factors to Anorexia or Bulimia Nervosa. The first stage of the
inquiry process was to create my proposal, which was easy since I already had a set plan on what
I wanted to research. The research stage of the inquiry process was the longest and most boring
stage. It consisted of me collecting numerous sources and then picking out which ones I thought
would be most beneficial to answer my question. I looked for sources on the Internet, on
scholarly journals, and other places to find reliable information, but I had the most luck with
finding reliable scholarly journals that gave me the information I was looking for. I knew
scholarly journals were going to be the most beneficial for providing me with the best
information because they included studies and statistics that were reliable and gave me just the
right amount of academic support I needed for my paper. What surprised me most in my research
were the shocking statistics about Anorexia and Bulimia. My findings encouraged me to find out
more because I was so interested in the topic and was intrigued to dig deeper. The production of
my essay was difficult, but with the help of my peers it made it a little more manageable. We had
a peer review session that encouraged me to help others and also ask others for tips on improving
my essay. The peer review sessions always helped me to recognize if I was on the right track and
allowed me to further practice my writing skills by giving tips to my peers. After I was on the
right track, I was ready to write my final essay. It was not as hard as I had expected and I was

Appelberg 4
pleasantly surprised with all the information I had collected, which made it easy to write my final
essay.
I thought the overall process of creating my inquiry project allowed me to grow as a
writer and thinker since the project gave me free range to explore the question I was most
interested in, while I still had guidelines to follow. It also gave me a wider perspective on eating
disorders and I was able to really understand that severity of these disorders and why it is so
important for those who are suffering to get the help they need.
Not only did the inquiry project help me to grow as a writer and thinker, as well as other
activities we did throughout the semester, but also all of the work given to me throughout the
semester has led me to become a stronger, more confident writer. Each class period began with a
ten minute free writing session, in which I learned to really enjoy, while it even encouraged me
to buy myself a personal journal. Each week, we were given a discussion topic along with
assigned blog posts. The discussion topic on the blog allowed me to think deeper into the lesson
for each week and to also see how my peers viewed the discussion topic. In the class, we also did
peer reviewing and revising as group work, which was a great way for me to become a better
writer and allowed me to give tips to others who may have been struggling with their writing
process. Along with writing journal entries, posting blogs posts, and participating in group work,
we read articles from Pursuing Happiness. Among other pieces we worked on this semester, I
had the chance to create double entry journals, participated in activities that helped us explore
our individual writing skills, wrote a personal essay, and created an inquiry project, all of which
led me to be able to create my final EPortfolio.
All in all, my Eportfolio has been a challenging yet rewarding project that I have worked
on this semester. Through the production of my EPortfolio, I recognized my growth as a writer

Appelberg 5
and thinker. I am now better able to understand the writing process as a whole and the research
behind further investigating a topic of importance. I believe that through completing this
EPortfolio, I have also learned more about myself as a writer and student that will help prepare
me for future coursework and writing in the rest of my college years and beyond. I hope you
enjoy my EPortfolio as much as I do!

Corinne Appelberg