Jaimish Patel

Mrs. Thomas
UWRT 1102
30 April 2015
Final Reflection
1. If I were to Teach UWRT1102, I would want to emphasize the skills and
formulas of writing. In the text They Say, I Say, we went over a lot of great
writing tips, which, when implemented in writing, create a better flowing
paper. A common problem that I, as well as my friends and peers, have is
that all my information may be in a paper, but it would not be organized.
Without organization, a Paper is no better than a bulleted list. I would
probably put more emphasis on They Say, I Say than The Book Thief. This
is because The Book Thief emphasizes reading ability while They Say, I
Say emphasizes rules of writing. As important as reading is, it requires the
ability to write to get past a certain level in either.
2. Dear Mr. Symmes,
I really enjoyed your piece, Who Pinched My Ride? It had the
perfect blend of satirical humor and a great story. Though it was lengthy,
the way you explained everything kept me at the edge of my seat, and
not many written pieces, let alone articles, make me do that. I really
enjoyed the fact that you tracked someone down that had your bike even
though it could have been dangerous. I also enjoyed that you pulled
references of others who had their bikes stolen and their statistics
actually surprised me. I always knew that so many people rode bicycles,
but I had no idea that so many were stolen.
The most surprising thing about your story, though, had to be the
schizophrenic. Two things surprised me about that; the first was that he

took it in the first place, and the second was how easily he just gave it
back. One things I actually laughed at was The police bike was sitting
patiently, waiting to be stolen, the fate of all bikes. The constant humor
of the articles kept me going through all of it, and left me wanting more.
Great Job, and happy bicycling!
Best,
Jaimish Patel
3. If I was trying to convince students to meet outside of class to peer review
each others papers, I would need to offer this incentive. I would probably ask
my professor for extra credit for this to anyone who shows up with proof by a
peer reviewed paper. If that did not work, I would ask the professor to require
it or face a deduction in a grade. In all honesty, with todays technology,
peer-reviewing should not take long. You dont even need to be in the same
room. I would probably set up a Google doc, and use that to peer review, and
get verbal feedback over the phone or hangouts. I would be open to peer
reviewing, and Im sure other students would have no problem with it either.
If they did, and all else failed, as a professor, I would cancel a class
at some time and tell students, instead of class, your job is to peer
review each others work over Google docs. If you dont do it, it will
be counted as an absence. Proof that you were online is necessary,
just take a screenshot.
4. For my thesis, the process was not difficult in writing a draft. We had already
written 7 research summaries, so writing a paper was not difficult. Organizing
it was. Most of the time, each article I summarized had to do with my topic,
but it was like my topic was in the middle of a spectrum and each article was
on the edge of it, so each article had to do with my paper, but the articles

had nothing to do with each other. This raised problems in organization and
transition. Because of this, I had to leave a few of the summaries and sources
out. It then became difficult with respect to length. To fix this, I had to put a
lot of my own opinion in it, which was difficult because I can only think so
much about it. The only real problem my peers had with my thesis was the
length. This was, as I stated, fixed with my own opinion, but it was still
difficult to go through. My final product is seven pages long. It uses ends and
beginnings of paragraphs as rough transitions, so I am not particularly proud
of those, but I am proud of the paper as a whole. The topic was something
that I was genuinely interested in and I think I did a good job explaining it.
5. Through this writing class, I learned a lot that I can carry with my. My goal for
1101 and 1102 was to gain collegiate writing experience. As painful as an 8
page paper was, it helped me fulfill that goal, and what I learned from it
heavily outweighs its difficulty. Like I said, my inquiry was difficult to write,
but I am glad I did it because of the skills, past writing, it made me
understand. It made me understand that my views are not set in stone; they
can change through the viewpoints of others. It also made me understand
that relative to what I thought I knew, I know nothing about anything. There is
a quote that goes, A truly wise man knows he knows nothing. This class
helped me realize that because as set as I was about war, and as much as I
was sure that war could never end, I changed my mind about it. It made me
realize how much world there is out there, and how much I have to learn
about it.