Thomas Cline

RC 2001-122

Final Self-Assessment

A New Perspective

RC 2001 was my first college writing class, as I had tested out of RC 1001 my freshman

year. As such, my writing was ripe for criticism, and I had much to learn about writing at a

college level. However, this means that my capacity for improvement was also high, and with

each unit I learned what made my writing strong and what I could do to improve it.

Seeing as I had never taken a college level writing course, Discourse Analysis was a

wonderful place to start to reveal my shortcomings in my writing. Analysis is a skill that

Criminal Justice and Political Science students must be adept at to succeed in their future fields,

and getting the chance to see where my analytical skills lagged behind was crucial to my success

not only in my field of study but also in the course itself(not two units later was our mini essay

an analysis on an artifact). Criminal Justice is a field built on debate and discussion, so having as

much content to work with as I did created a new challenge of identifying which articles to use

for my analysis. I have always struggled with pinpointing anything, not just narrowing down

choices. My writing reflects this, as I tend to type more words than necessary. Being given a

smaller word count than normal as well helped me practice concise essay construction, and I was

forced to re-evaluate how I explained my thoughts when writing. My writing is more concise

because of this re-evaluation, and now I know how to establish a claim or defend an argument in

fewer words than before. This will serve me well in politics, as delivering concise arguments will

be conducive to the public. Attention spans grow shorter and shorter, and a politician who speaks

too much will lose people the longer they speak on an issue. Getting straight to the point is a
much better way of explaining yourself. Criminology on the other hand is different, as writing

any type of report or document requires the attention to detail that diction-heavy writing

produces. Criminology is all about the details, and while concise writing will help in politics, I

will need to make sure never to spare any detail in Criminology reports.

Public Facing Major Issues was a unit important to me due to its relation to the political

field. Being my minor, writing about important issues is a skill I will have to be proficient at if I

am to continue down a political path. However what this unit made very clear was my

shortcoming when it came to clarity. My final draft was 250 words over the words count of 900,

but despite this some of my arguments were still unclear in their intentions. I had to make my

writing more concise, and revising the paper gave me the opportunity to do just that. Through my

revisions I got to see how much I had grown in the weeks since I had done the paper. I learned

how to make arguments clear without having to use as many words, and was able to cut the

words count down. The topic itself helped me grow as well. By researching both sides of the

issue I picked, I was able to develop a perspective that incorporates multiple viewpoints on my

issue. For someone in the political field, this is important to be able to relate to multiple bases to

garner as much support as possible for elections. Furthermore, looking at an issue from multiple

perspectives is key to designing and implementing policies that will work for multiple different

groups of people, or at the very least be understood by multiple groups of people as to why a

policy has been enacted. The final composition was fun as well. Tiktok is such a defining part of

the pandemic and my generation that incorporating it into class really helped me flex that

creative muscle in a comfortable and familiar manner. Being able to connect my classwork to an

app I frequently use was very conducive to my creative process, and it gave me a benchmark to

work with for future projects.

 Genre in the Discourse was a unit pertinent to my profession due to its focus on

professionalism. Before this unit, I had only rarely dealt with professional discourse and

behavior. Of course I knew how to behave politely, but speaking in a strict professional manner

was a relatively new idea for me. That is why writing my proposal was an impactful experience

for me. Being able to practice writing such an important type of document is comforting, and I

now have experience others might not have in the work environment. The artifact analysis

portion of the unit revealed how long it had been since I had done an actual analysis. My first

draft and final draft both did not start analyzing my artifact until midway through the paper, and

summary took up far too much of my writing process. Revisions gave me the chance to see how

much I learned in such a short period of time in the class, and I was able to bring the focus of the

beginning of the paper back to analysis instead of summary. I am grateful for the chance to

revisit analytical writing, as I had not closely reviewed that style of writing since high school and

had clearly lost touch with the necessary techniques to proper analysis. With criminal justice

being a heavily analytical field of study, this unit was crucial in helping me grow in my major.

The final composition was another chance to use what I had learned in the course, specifically

from making videos in the PFMI unit. Seeing as I had enjoyed making those videos so much, I

elected to take what I had learned from that unit and apply it to this unit to make an even better

video. Having a direct inspiration in the form of my artifact also helped me by having a

benchmark to go off of. Furthermore, I was given the opportunity to differentiate between

plagiarism and inspiration, a very important skill for politicians and lawyers alike.

RC 2001 was a wonderful class that I am grateful to have gotten to take. With this being

my first college level writing class, I was ripe for criticism. The criticism was necessary to help

further my writing, and I will remember these lessons throughout my college career.