Reflective Letter to Past Anna,

Throughout this quarter, in the Writing II class I had the opportunity to get to know myself

as a writer. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this class and the assignments we would be asked

to complete. In high school I took AP English Language, so I was expecting this class to be

similar to that. Instead of analyzing essay types and memorizing their structure, we were given

projects in Writing II that prompted creativity. I really enjoyed writing creatively and getting to

choose which genre to write my essay’s in for each project. Creative writing has been

something I’ve struggled with in the past, but these projects helped me to be creative in the

confinements of the projects. I have grown as a writer throughout this quarter and acquired

many skills in reading carefully, peer editing, group work, and my writing process. 

Before this quarter I didn’t know how to give helpful feedback when doing peer editing. I

would spend most of my time reading the essay word by word and fixing grammar mistakes.

During this class, and in the peer review workshop I learned that it’s more efficient to read the

whole paper before making edits. This way you can see the structure and organization of the

essay from an outside perspective and not get caught up in the actual words. When peer

editing, it's not the job of the editor to improve the writing and fix the essay, the editor is

supposed to give feedback about the organization, flow, and ask questions where things are

unclear. The reason why peer editors don’t need to fix grammar errors and spelling mistakes is

because this is just the first draft, and the author will go back over the essay after receiving

feedback. After learning this it took a burden off me. For the first time, I didn’t feel like I had a

responsibility to improve another person’s essay. I was able to give feedback that would help

the author improve their own writing without doing it myself. I have improved my writing skills

through developing my peer review strategies. My flow and organization have improved this

quarter, but I have more room to grow. Once I’ve written something it's hard for me to take this
outside perspective like I’m reading it for the first time which is what I do with peer reviewing.

This is something I can work on and develop in the rest of my academic career.

In the first few weeks of the quarter, we did many readings which helped to build our

foundation. One reading that really resonated with me was called “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne

Lamott. When writing papers, I always find starting to be the hardest part. This article presented

me with a new perspective on writing papers. The first draft doesn’t have to be complicated and

have the pressure of being perfect. I learned that it’s better to just get the ideas down on paper

and write a long first draft. Instead of trying to write the first draft to the standard of the final draft

it's much easier to refine the essay later. I found this tip to be very helpful and I saw good

results when I went back and toned up my ideas. 

Another activity we did in this class that really helped my writing flow and getting ideas

on to the paper was the journal. Every week we completed a journal entry for about twenty

minutes. I found this exercise to be extremely helpful in my first drafts. After writing my journal

entries I found that I could write my first drafts in one time chunk without stopping and restarting

many times. The problem with stopping and restarting the rough draft is that the ideas and flow

don’t move together as well. When doing a free write this really helps to let the ideas flow onto

the page without being too critical. I’ve learned that the first draft is not where you want to

decide what ideas will fit into the essay. The first draft is where you want to write all the ideas

and then the cutting and trimming happens in the revision stage. These activities helped

prepare me to write writing project one.

In writing project one I made major revisions to the translation piece by making it more

clear and adding a lesson plan for how to implement the collaborative learning project I

described. I also revised the reflection essay by writing in more detail about the choices I made

in my translation. During this project I struggled with organization and a way to look at this essay

from a distance. Every time I would read my reflection essay, I would get stuck on the words

and how to change them to be clearer which detracted from my understanding of the
organization. I spent most of my time revising this essay by reorganizing it and grouping my

ideas together. I noticed that I had many points stemming from the same core ideas and just

had to figure out a way to connect them in a way that would flow. From my rough draft to my

final draft to the revised version in my portfolio you can see how much I’ve grown over the

quarter. Studying the constraints of genres and really looking at the organization and structure

of different genres helped me to advance this skill. By researching an academic article and

comparing it to a blog post I was able to see the differences in genre and organization. Each

project builder for this project helped me to refine what my article was about and how the author

executed her purpose through organization. After completing writing project one, we started

preparing for the second writing project.

In the second half of the quarter, we focused on style and conversation. We completed

an activity in class called Houseboat on the Styx which was fun and engaging. This assignment

asked us to write a conversation between famous people. I chose to write in my group’s

conversation from the perspective of Lizzo. This was an interesting assignment because we had

to write from the perspective of another person. I did research on Lizzo about her background,

political views, and her controversy so I could hopefully convey her correctly in the activity. This

assignment was a good set up for writing project two because we had to write in the perspective

of many different authors and create a conversation between them.

In writing project two, I chose to focus my topic on teaching during the pandemic. I chose

five different related articles and synthesized them into one conversation. This was interesting

because the authors had counter points that led the conversation to be engaging. The

Houseboat on the Styx assignment helped me to use empathy and understanding to emulate

what the authors were saying and how they were responding. My conversation took place on a

Quora Digest forum which was good for this type of assignment because the authors could

respond to each other. Since this writing piece encompassed five articles, synthesizing the main

arguments of the articles was crucial. This project helped me to think critically about the purpose
of each article and how to convey that to the proposed audience. In both writing projects it was

important to consider how the design affected the message to the audience. 

Writing project one and two both challenged me in different ways. In writing project one I

had an easier time synthesizing the article into one blog post, but I was challenged when

considering all the design choices. Since writing project, one was a smaller assignment I spent

a lot of time working on the format. I wanted the pedagogical blog to engage the audience and

be easily accessible. Writing project two was much different because I synthesized and

consolidated five articles into one conversation. In this project, I focused more on how the

articles would relate to each other and develop an interesting conversation. In this project, I still

included design choices that would engage the audience, but it was less of a priority. I

converted the conversation into a Quora post so it would be easily approached by the audience.

Through these projects, my writing has developed, and my analysis of the assignments has

deepened. Writing project one, was one of the first times I considered design and organization

and how they affect the audience. After the completion of these two projects, I can say

definitively that my understanding of design and my ability to synthesize ideas has improved

tremendously. 

I’ve shown that my understanding of the assignments has developed through my

revisions. I’m proud of my final portfolio and all the hard work that has gone into each project.

My favorite writing piece of mine in the portfolio is writing project two. When talking to Professor

Bartolini I realized how empathetic my second writing project was. Being empathetic is a

character trait that I believe is important and I’m happy that it showed through my writing. In

writing project two, I still have room for improvement in consolidating my ideas and shaping up

the reflective essay. This is similar to what I can improve on for writing project one. In the first

writing project, the organization and development of clear ideas is an area I need to develop

further, but through this class I have shown that I’m already improving in this. 
 The completion of this course has shown me how significantly I can grow as a writer with

some direction. My writing had changed from simply completing the assignment, to considering

how different aspects of the writing effect the purpose, context, and audience of the piece. Now

that I’ve completed this class it makes me less intimidated for future writing classes. This class

has made writing less daunting for me and helped me to understand the expectations of

different writing assignments. In the future, my writing will continue to improve and build off the

skills I learned through this class. I feel inspired to do more writing and to improve my writing

skills. The variation in essay expectations and genres has helped me lay the foundation for my

future writing. I now feel ready to take on the diverse writing assignments of college.

Best of luck!

Anna Tackabery, June 12, 2022