I have learned a lot in Comp. 1.

During the semester, for every project we were taught how to address the five WPA outcomes which are 1) rhetorical knowledge, 2) critical thinking, reading, and writing, 3) processes, 4) knowledge of conventions, and 5) composing in electronic environments. As I entered the class I saw this challenge as a mountain to climb. As each project came to an end I worked my up this mountain with the help of my peers, family, and the UWC staff who acted as my rope and harness which helped me get to the top of Comp. 1 Mountain. Each project gave me a better understanding of how to address each WPA. Through my time in Comp. 1 I have progressed as a writer and learned how to address the sub category of the WPA outcomes rhetorical knowledge. I have focused on a purpose for every project we did. The purpose of your writing will determine the audience of who you are trying to communicate your message with, whether it is to persuade or inform or something else. For example the profile I did focused on informing an audience who might be interested in ER nurses through experiences and moments of the ER nurse that I interviewed and talked with. As far as using appropriate voices for the projects I had to have the voice of narrative or some other voice depending on the situation. I wrote in a minimum of three genres, informative, persuasive, and reflective. I realized that a certain genre will shape the reading and writing. My first project was a movie review. By writing it, I had to provide partial information about the movie so that a reader will know if I think they should go see it without knowing the entire plot. I also formatted my papers according to the requirements and the style that I thought would gain interest.

Now that I have talked about rhetorical knowledge I will talk about how this class has really taught me how to think, read, and write critically. I have always been taught to do these things but I learned how to do this more in one semester than I did throughout most of my high school career. I learned the relationships among language, knowledge, and power from our projects, mainly from my persuasive paper because I had to have knowledge of my subject and use persuasive language to get my point across. For every project I had to read and write which helped me to think and learn about what I was reading about and then I could communicate what I knew. This class taught me how to see a writing assignment as a series of tasks. For all of my projects I had to evaluate my sources or readings to understand them, analyze the importance of sources, and determine which of those sources I was going to draw some ideas from. For my persuasive paper I had to find sources and then integrate my ideas with those of the publishers. That part wasnt very challenging because I was being persuasive about an automobile which is a passionate interest of mine and that I possess a lot of knowledge about. As far as the process of any given assignment might be, this class really helped me with how to approach this. I knew that a paper requires multiple drafts but I would always do one draft after another which didnt help much because not a whole lot would change. I learned however that after you complete a draft that you need to take a break for a couple of days and then come back to it when you are fresh to revise and edit it. I learned to proof read my papers multiple times and over a period of two or three days so that I can easily pick out my mistakes. Another

thing I learned was to let other people read my work and allow them to give me suggestions of how to improve it. With other people proof reading my papers this opened up the social aspect of reading and writing that I was unaware of. Although I learned to rely on others to critique my work I wasnt dependent on it. If I had to, I would critique the paper on my own over a period of time. I also learned that in order to reach different audiences I had to write for a range of publishers. A good example of this is we had to write for our school newspaper for one assignment and the school website for another which would be seen by different groups of readers. As far as the knowledge of conventions goes I already had a basic idea about conventions when I came into the class, however, I understand it a lot better now. This class taught me common formats for different texts. An example of this is the format we had to use for our movie reviews which was for an online magazine and had to be formatted a certain way. The review had to incorporate at least one picture and have the text in columns which I had never done before. I also learned that your tone will vary depending on the reason of you writing. For example I acted as a movie critic when I did movie reviews and a persuader for our persuasive papers. I have known for a while to use proper punctuation, grammar, and spelling but that can always be improved. Comp. 1 gave me a better understanding of this. I also had the Writing Center to help point out my mistakes and give some suggestions and rules that apply in different scenarios. An example of this is the use of commas in my movie reviews which werent correct. After I sat down with a

Writing Center employee they advised me where to use commas. This really helped me because I had never known exactly when to use them. I would tend to just throw them in about anywhere instead of starting a new sentence. As far as electronic environments go, I already knew how to use these to a certain extent. I have used computers and databases to do research for other projects. I did learn, however, to use the school library website to do some research. Our class was shown how to look up information on different sections such as databases or books from computers. I wasnt shown how to use Microsoft word but I already knew how to use that from high school. My teacher did show us how to save our documents to a cloud which allows you to access it from anywhere instead of it being on a specific computer. I never did this though because I dont like the idea of my documents possibly being accessed by anyone. I learned that using electronic forms of research is a lot cheaper and less time consuming. I could locate information that I needed and print out specific pages for free or either ten cents a page which is a lot cheaper than purchasing the book that the information came out of. Now that the semester is over, I am standing at the top of this mountain looking at where I started and how far I have come. I had to overcome many challenges throughout the semester as I learned how to address the five WPA outcomes. Through our three major assignments I learned how to address 1) rhetorical knowledge, 2) critical thinking, reading and writing, 3) process, 4) knowledge of conventions, and 5) composing in electronic environments. I will leave this reflection while I sit atop Comp. 1 Mountain and enjoy the sunrise; new

challenges are emerging on the horizon. I now have new obstacles to face. And, after all, isnt that what learning is all about?