Throughout this course, I felt it was vital as a writer to compose about the things

that I am most passionate about. Often times, personally, I find it somewhat difficult to

compose a piece that is solid, fluid and polished when it is based upon a topic that I am

not particular interested in. Whitney encouraged us all semester to let our guard down and

be ourselves in our writing; she stressed that we shouldnt care about making mistakes or

sounding weird because there was always time for improvement. That really resonated

with me throughout the entire semester. Coming into this course I was scared to step

outside of the box and let my real voice shine through. On the first day of class, Whitney

asked us to write down our goals for the semester. The first thing that came to mind was

that I have always wanted to make the reader feel something after reading my work-- I

wanted to have the ability to paint a picture in my readers head. After taking this course

and learning new perspective from Whitney, I feel like I have achieved this goal.

Our first composition for this course was the literacy narrative in which I wrote

about finding and falling in love with Florida State University. My journey of getting into

this university was a big part of my life, and I felt it necessary to write about that part of

myself. I concentrated on the fact that nothing in life worth having will ever come easy; I

described my hard-fought academic journey to gaining admission into FSU. In the first

draft, I was very closed off; I wasnt quite comfortable with bearing all of my innermost

and honest feelings, considering the fact that the journey wasnt a completely positive

one. As most first drafts go, I essentially slapped the basis of my ideas down as they

came to me with the intent to further develop them later. After peer reviewing, I began to

form a story line, allowing for more cohesiveness in the second and third drafts. Meeting

with Whitney before the final draft submission gave me a lot of insight in regards to what
I wanted to get out of my paper. After our meeting, my paper went from high school

level to what I believe to be college level and I can honestly say that Im proud of the

final product.

Going through the motions of the 2nd composition was a very similar process for

the Research Paper; if I showed you the first draft and the final draft, you may not even

believe that it is the same paper. I completely flipped this paper so many times, constantly

improving it with every draft. As I have told Whitney before, I am the type of writer who

needs to sleep on my ideas. I would come up with an original idea for the paper,

develop it, and then a week later I would think of ways to improve the statement or take it

out all together. Hindsight truly is 20/20 and looking back on the first draft of the

research paper, I feel as if I had no direction, which isnt necessarily a bad thing- it was a

first draft after all. I was trying to define beauty which is an abstract term in itself, but

it wasnt going anywhere. I talked with my classmates in my peer review group, and they

gave me opinions from their perspective, and I found it helpful to get insight from the

creative minds of my peers. I received back my final draft from Whitney, and she gave

me notes on how to improve my final draft. She emphasized one thing: specificity. With

her feedback in mind, I reread my final draft and underlined everywhere in the paper that

I could be more specific. I eventually finalized on how cosmetic companies deceive

middle-aged adults via advertising tactics. By focusing in on a certain age group, I was

able to narrow down the scheme of the paper tremendously and heighten its overall

quality.

Creating the composition in 3 genres was my favorite part of the class. I had a lot

of fun playing with different mediums and exploring all of the outlets there are for people
to express their thoughts. At first, I had no idea which remediations I wanted to compose

in, simply because there are so many options. I had one overall goal in mind: to reach a

different group of people in every genre to maximize the amount of people I have the

potential to reach. Once again, I found the group work to be very helpful; they actually

gave me the idea of writing an email to the cosmetic company Burts Bees. I feel that

each of the genres that I composed in have the ability to change someones perspective

and/or enlighten them on the topic, which is the overall main goal.

After taking this course, I feel as though I have grown tremendously as a writer by

achieving the goals that I had set for myself at the beginning of the course. If I had to say

that there was one main thing that I will be taking away from this course, it would be that

Ive learned that there is a major difference between changing a sentence or two in a

paragraph and revising your work. With the term revision comes a lot of thought; there

has to be serious contemplation and reworking for something to be classified as revised.

The skills that I have learned throughout this course are invaluable, and will certainly be

a huge help to me in my future endeavors.