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Jocelyn Zamora

Instructor McCann

English 1301.129

30 November 2022

Final Reflection

The. Last. Assignment. Finally, after climbing the treacherous mountain that is English

1301, I can finally feel the breeze and feel the glory of the mountain's crest. As majestic as it

feels to finally be done with English 1301, I can’t help ,but look down at all that I have

accomplished and all the bumps and peaks that it took to get here. Although this class sucked the

soul out of me, I really enjoyed getting the opportunity to flourish and challenge my writing

skills. As for the last assignment, a lot of intricacy went into revising my three final essays,

building my portfolio website was a whole experience all together, a lot of what I learned in this

class can be applied in the future, and the final outcome of this semester really surprised me.

Firstly, the revision of my three final essays was a whole hurtle to get through. One major

lesson that I have learned throughout this semester is that there is no such thing as a

picture-perfect essay. I still remember when I first learned that in this course we would have to

write two drafts of an essay before we got to turn in the final. At first I thought it was absurd that

we had to keep editing and changing the same paper over and over. Soon I learned that the same

mind does not think alike. Every time I went back to my “perfect” paper I would always find

almost comical grammar and spelling mistakes. I have found that even my final drafts have

errors and that is ok. Two major rhetorical choices I made when revising my final drafts are tone

change and word choices. The main differing aspect that came with revising the final essay is the

change in audience. Now that formality was necessary I found myself changing a lot of informal
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wording and tone. The major words I found myself altering a lot are their and they. I used a lot of

pronouns in the first essays because although it was advised not to, I still occasionally slipped

some in. Going back, I made sure to work around pronouns as much as possible. I also found

myself going back to assignments to better get an idea of what to do for each essay and how to

generally revise everything. Lunsford’s chapter 4,”College level Writing”, really helped me get a

refresher on what is expected out of a professional paper. Ann M Johnson’s “Discourse

Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership Conflict and Diversity” helped me go

back to the mindset of essay one. It gave me a blueprint to what a genre and community analysis

is supposed to depict. For essay two, I looked back at Andrea Lunsford’s “Composing a

Rhetorical Analysis: Reading and Viewing Critically” to get a refresher on analytical skills and

how to depict my visual the best way I can. Lastly, I used Andrea Lunsford’s “Fallacies of

Argument” to make sure I did not locate any fallacies in the article in order to write it down in

the revision. Just as much effort was put into my website as to the revisions.

To add, the creation of the website was hands down my favorite assignment out of all that

were given. As fun as it was, it still took a lot of effort. From the beginning I knew I wanted a

specific theme so I correlated it to the essay topics I chose. In the first essay I chose to talk about

an Instagram community that focuses on the societal issues females that are of size face. In the

second essay I chose to write about an image that depicts the historical restrictions women faced

to follow the beauty standards of the time. In the last essay I wrote about an article that

establishes the negative effects women have when viewing magazine articles that depict strong

implications of beauty and youth. All these topics combined to a theme I can really relate to: the

female experience. Thanks to theme organization from my essays , my portfolio has very strong

visual rhetoric. Everything has an overlapping theme that goes back to the expression of the
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female experience. Some verbal rhetoric was also used to make the tone flow throughout the

portfolio. I made sure to be formal in vocabulary yet exciting visually. Like any other

assignment, there were some setbacks. I found brainstorming the structure the easiest part of the

portfolio creation process. On the contrary, it was really hard to portray all those ideas on paper.

Initially when starting to work on the website, I found it extremely difficult to use Weebly's

mechanics. I would click and drag ,yet I was practically unable to edit certain aspects of my web

page. Luckily, after a lot of tinkering, I was able to get a feel of the mechanics of Weebly’s

editing software. Just like the revisions, I found myself going back to many of my assignments to

fully understand how to work on my portfolio. Lunsford,s page 809-817 helped me get

associated with portfolios. It showed me what exactly a portfolio is, why it is vital to know how

to make a portfolio, and what exactly should be included in a portfolio. Keren Mauk’s

,”Assembling Writing Portfolios”, really helped me understand what I should do for this

portfolio assignment and further cleared my memory of what should and should not be included

in the portfolio. Along with these two assignments from class, I reached out to other sources of

information to better understand how to construct the portfolio. Throughout the creation of my

website I always made sure to heavily reference the grading rubric given to us by our professor.

When I was struggling with the editing functions on weebly, I turned to youtube for help. I found

Santrel Media’s video, “Weebly Tutorial for Beginners (2021 Full Tutorial) - Easy Professional

Website”, very helpful. Although the video is almost half an hour long, as a very lost first time

weebly user, it was very informative. Aside from what I learned in this assignment, I learned a

lot throughout all of English 1301.

In addition, English 1301 was a huge learning experience for me. Throughout this class I

learned things I did not even think I needed to learn. For instance, with the intervention of my
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peers in my first essay peer review and my first SI session I quickly learned that I have been

using commas completely wrong for my whole life. Ever since I can remember I have been using

a space before a comma like so; green ,and. Instead of; green, and. As simple as this issue was, I

wouldn't have been able to identify it if I were to not be in this class. Asides my whole comma

fiasco, there are many other lessons that I learned in this class that can be implemented onto

other future courses. For example, this class has been my very first introduction to college

writing. Without a doubt, good college level writing is a skill that is useful no matter what type

of college class one attends. I also learned a lot about my personal writing style. As restricting

and formal college writing may be, that certainly does not mean no style is allowed. The essays

where I took risks and put a bit of pa-zaaz in were definitely my most well received. I also once

again learned about the power of drafts and how no writing is perfect and error proof. As much

as all these lessons can be heavily implemented in any other future college course I take, there

are some exceptions. For instance, some of the essays taught me lessons that were very specific

to the task at hand. As fun as they were, I can not really see myself using the skills again.For

essay one, I learned how to analyze a community specifically on Instagram. Although I can

possibly use community analytical skills, I doubt I will ever have to on Instagram. For essay two

I learned how to find rhetoric in a particular image and connect it to what I know about women’s

historical roles to make a deeper meaning about the particular image. Since this instance is very

specific, I once again doubt I would ever have to put it to use. As for the last essay, I learned a lot

about in-text MLA citations. As beneficial as this seems, I plan to go into a more science driven

career so I doubt i’ll have to focus much on the specifics of MLA since I will have to switch to

APA. Asides English 1302 and future mandatory reading or writing courses, I will soon not have
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to use my MLA skills. I have learned a lot throughout this course and with that knowledge I have

also learned a lot about myself as a writer and as a student.

Lastly, I am definitely not the same writer I was since I first walked into my first English

1301 class. I cannot begin to express how much my writing mentality has changed since the

beginning of the year. Looking back at my first homework assignments, it is easy to see that I did

not put as much care into writing as I do now. Even looking at my final revision edits I can see

the comparison from my heavily marked up first final essay and my last final essay where I just

had to change some comma spacing and minimal grammatical errors. I loved writing then just as

much as I do right now. The difference is that I simply now have learned more about the care that

comes with using my words properly to portray an even stronger message. This class also taught

me a lot of obedience as a student. Although this class was not as grueling as some of my other

current classes, it was surely straining to have to do my usual heavy load of physics homework

plus a long essay. I found myself having to sacrifice a lot of me time to get my papers done, but

the grades are what kept me pushing. I also have tackled as well as gained a lot of writing

weaknesses throughout the progression of this course. For instance, I come out of this class

without my major weakness of using personal pronouns in every single other word. By my final

essay I only had one or two pronouns to remove. I also got rid of most of my writer's block. Near

the beginning of the course we discussed with our instructor about tactics to avoid or get out of

writer's block. Thankfully after implementing some of the tactics that were shown to us I do not

have to stare at my computer dazilly for two hours before I get a sentence out. I am a better and

more relaxed writer. On the contrary I have kept some of my old bad writing habits. For instance,

I still like to procrastinate a lot and especially in writing the only difference now is that as I

procrastinate more and more into the year, the word count expands more. I also still struggle with
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spelling just as much as I did before. I am dyslexic so I doubt there is much help that can be

done with that. I am aware grammar is technically not a weakness, but sometimes it sure gets in

the way of my writing.

In conclusion, being part of this class was surely an experience. As much as I may have

struggled in some sections I really over all enjoyed being part of this semester’s English 1301

class. As for my last assignment, a lot of rhetorical choices and effort went into the writing and

construction of both my portfolio webpage and my final essay revisions. I definitely learned a lot

of applicable and not so applicable lessons throughout this course ,and I have grown as a writer

and as a student thanks to this class. As much as i’d want to say i'll miss this class there is no

reason to say goodbye. I come out of this experience ready and strong to tackle the next

mountain trail that is English 1302. No matter how steep next semester will be, I know I can

tackle it one step at a time.