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Seanna Specht
Professor Olivia Zicherman
UWRT 1101
11 November 2014
My Final Reflection
This class was unlike any other class that I have ever taken. Going into it, not knowing
what to expect, I was nervous. It was my first semester of being a college student and I wasnt
sure what classes were like in college. This class actually surprised me and wasnt like anything
that I have ever had before, in a good way. I had never been in an English class where my
classmates got to edit my work to help benefit my writing skills. I really enjoyed taking this class
and it taught me a lot about myself and what kind of writing I enjoy doing. I like how we got to
express our opinions and feelings about different things in class. Everyone had a voice in this
class and thats what made it so unique.
I learned about many different things in this class. I learned how to improve my writing
skills, about genre, about procrastination, that every essay isnt a five-paragraph essay, culture
differences and I learned a lot about myself. The thing that I learned most about is genre. I had
never learned about genre in classrooms before this one. None of my teachers ever brought up
the topic unless we were in the library or watching a certain type of movie. No one ever took the
time to explain just exactly what genre was until this class. It was very hard to grasp at first, but
after talking about it for a long period of time in class and doing activities to learn about different
genres really helped me better understand genre. The first exercise that we did in class about
genre really opened my eyes. Ms. Zicherman had us run around campus in groups and find all
kinds of different genres. There were so many of them! My group just ran around the Smith

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building and we found all of them in just one building! Most of them were on a bulletin board.
We were the first group back and got five extra points for our genre project. That was a huge
project we had to do for class. We had to choose a partner and a topic to find different genres on.
My partner and I, Kathy, chose to do school shootings. We had to find three different genres
about the topic and then create three new genres about the topic. This was very time consuming,
but Im glad we did it because it really showed me about genre and I have a clear definition of
what genre is now unlike before this class.
The first big assignment that we had to do in this class was the literacy narrative. I was
extremely nervous about this paper because I had never really written a narrative before. I didnt
know what to expect or how Ms. Zicherman graded things so that made me even more nervous.
Once I got to writing my literacy narrative, I had no problem telling the story itself. Its like it
just came natural to me. The words just kept coming out and it was like I wasnt even thinking
about it. I thought I would have trouble not making the page length requirement, but I had no
problem whatsoever. This sort of boosted my confidence because I was proud that I actually
wrote a story of my own. I am proud of my literacy narrative even though its not even close to
being a perfect paper. I am just proud that it is my own and tells a story that happened in my life
that means something to me. I still need to do some more editing before I post it on my portfolio.
Almost every class we had a discussion forum due. This was something that Ms.
Zicherman posted and we had to respond and discuss the topic that she chose. Sometimes we
would have to read a chapter and then answer questions about it and sometimes she would just
ask for our opinion on something. We had to respond to her post and then we also had to respond
to one of our classmates post. This gave us the chance as classmates to become more open with
each other and connect us to one another. We got a chance to see if we had the same or different

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views about something. I loved this because I love seeing different responses from people.
Everyone has their own way of writing and this let us express that. We got to see all of the
different views and opinions on a certain topic. Honestly I think it made me more open-minded
to other peoples views and beliefs. I respect people that arent afraid to say what is on their
mind, even if it doesnt agree with how other people think or feel. Thats what makes writing our
own.
Every day in class we have daybook entries and they are almost like the discussion
forums except we didnt respond to what other people wrote in their daybooks. Ms. Zicherman
would tell us to write about something in our daybook and we would just have to write for five to
ten minutes about anything that came to our minds about what she said. I honestly didnt really
enjoy these, but I didnt mind them either. Sometimes it was hard for me to write about
something when I didnt really have anything to say about the topic. I appreciate that fact that
Ms. Zicherman wanted us to write every day, but this was my least favorite thing to do in class.
Our online portfolios are due in a few weeks and Im a little nervous about it. I have
never created an online portfolio before and I hope that it comes together well. I am using the
website weebly and I hope that it is simple to use. I havent been putting much thought as to
what I want in my portfolio, but I guess I should start. We are required to put our big papers and
drafts, at least five daybook entries, our letter to Ms. Zicherman, two selected in-class
assignments, five selected responses to readings and at least five replies to classmates, our
midterm reflection and our final reflection. That is a lot of work and I just realized that I have A
LOT to do and I should probably get started on it now. The in-class assignment that I have
chosen to put into my portfolio is a bubble map that we had to do on ourselves. We had to
describe ourselves and then go around to our classmates and find who we were most alike to and

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least alike to. I liked this activity because it was at the beginning of the semester when we did it
and it gave us a chance to see who we had a lot in common with. We got to introduce ourselves
to one another and learn about each other. It was a good way to get us to interact with one
another in a classroom environment. The other in-class assignment that I decided to include into
my portfolio is when we had to read a letter and decide whether each sentence was ethos, pathos
or logos. I never really understood what each of those really meant until this exercise. This
activity gave me many examples of each of the three points of the rhetorical triangle. We got to
work in groups in most of the in-class assignments that we had to do. I liked that a lot because it
allowed us to have not just one perspective about something and it helped us gain social skills
that Im sure we will need in our futures.
The reason why I chose the five daybook entries that I have decided to put into my
portfolio is because I feel like they all show my personality and my values. I also chose them
because my hand writing looks somewhat neat. I think that they all show what kind of person I
am. I think that they are good examples of how I think about certain things. I havent decided on
which five responses to readings or five replies to classmates that I want to include in my
portfolio because there are so many to choose from. I need to be thinking about which ones I do
want in my portfolio. I just want my responses to reflect my thoughts well, so I wont choose one
that I did in a hurry and didnt put a lot of thought into. I want to pick ones that I actually tried to
do well on. I think that most of my replies are fine to use because I am mostly just agreeing to
what that person said, so I dont think that choosing those will be that difficult.
I honestly enjoyed this class; I met a lot of new friends that I hope to keep throughout my
college experience. This class gave me the opportunity to voice my opinion on many different

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topics, and to communicate with my classmates often. I hope that I have more classes like this
one in my future. It was unlike any other class that I have ever taken, in a good way.