Chase Stodden

Professor Arnold
UWRT 1101-073
December 14, 2015
Final Reflection
Writing has never been my forte. I have always leaned towards
mathematics and science when it comes to school, but I have realized in just
my first semester of college that writing will always be apart of my life, even
in a technical field; therefore, I have decided that if I have to write I might as
well become good at it. Thankfully, this class has made me write a good
amount, allowing me to see some minor improvements throughout the
course of the semester. Either write something worth reading or do
something worth writing." This is a quote by Benjamin Franklin that I
stumbled upon and it now comes to mind when ever I take a look at my
writing. After rereading all of my final version of my essays I asked myself, is
this worth reading? The quote really jumped out at me because I personally
would hate to read something that is of no worth, especially because I am
not a huge fan of reading either.
As stated in the previous reflection, I have learned that there are steps
to writing a good, worthy paper and that a paper is only as good as its
weakest step. Meaning that if the invention work or the drafts to a paper is
lacking, so will the final draft. Writing in steps was something that was new
to me. In previous writing classes, I would just write one version of my essay

with zero invention work, but the classes were not held to a high standard of
writing and my one draft essay would get by. Through my short experience in
college, that is not the case. I have started to actually enjoy writing rough
drafts because I know that they are not only necessary to write a worthy
paper, but are a good place to let ideas out freely. The ideas do not even
have to be complete in a rough draft making it easier to write.
The first writing task for this course was a literacy narrative where we
were to write about how we became literate in something. Not only was I
stressed about just being in a college writing class, but then I was told to
write a narrative! They have always been my least favorite type of writing
because I am not good at telling a story. I was also stressed about what was
expected of the essay being that I am a freshman in my first semester of
college. Luckily we took it step by step in class and it definitely helped me
piece it together. It was the first time we did peer review and I learned that
having someone else read your paper is vital. It is always good to get
constructive criticism from others because other people will see things that
the writer may miss. For example, in my draft I wrote a sentence about
wetsuits in the fifth paragraph and one of my peers who proof read it said
that it was not necessary. I went back and reread that paragraph and totally
agreed.
Attached to the literacy narrative was the altered book. I really enjoyed
making the book and it was fun trying to put writing into a visual, but it was
extremely time consuming! I was not expecting it take so long to make or

how hard it was putting words into pictures and drawings. The most time
consuming part was just thinking what could represent the words that were
written in the essay, especially because of my horrifying artistic ability, but I
grinded through it because I had to and came up with the best thing I could
without having to buy any extra materials. It is not perfect by any means,
but I was definitely proud of what I put together.
The second writing topic covered genres. I was not aware of everything
that was considered a genre of writing. For instance, I was unaware that a lab
report was a genre, so I decided to write about lab reports making that my
found genre. If I could describe lab reports in one word, the word would be
sucks. They are awful to write, even worst than narratives. They are
extremely tedious and are just simply annoying to write, but there are many
lab reports that I am going to have to write in the future being that I am
majoring in mechanical engineering. The found genres paper was difficult to
write about because lab reports are not very complex. They are just packed
with information on a particular lab. I had difficulty with length of the paper,
but there are not much to lab reports other than a few simple rules. So rather
than ramble on about something meaningless to a lab report, it was short
and to the point.
The third and final writing task was the ethnography. I personally
enjoyed writing my ethnography because it was a research paper where we
were able to choose what, or who, we wrote about. We were told to choose a
subculture to observe and study and then simply write about it. The

subculture I chose was freestyle football. It was fun to go out and actually
observe the subculture and it was easy to write about because I chose the
particular subculture due to it catching my attention for I have a strong
passion for soccer. The only difficult thing about writing the final paper for
me was once again length. I have trouble elaborating on ideas and tend to
be straight to the point. I do not believe that my ability to expand on simple
thoughts has improved drastically over the course of this semester and is
something that I still need to work on as a writer.
I was told as a child that in order to become a stronger and faster
reader, I had to read a lot, whether it just be a magazine or a novel; with that
said, I feel that writing is the same way. The only way I will improve and get
rid of some of my bad habits is by writing more and more, which is
something I plan on doing in the future.