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Noah Horn

Dr. Sally Griffin

UWRT 1102

2 March 2017

Midterm Reflection

I have found that academically, My writing skills have been the most inelastic. I have to

force myself to change my style or make an effort to change the way in which I approach a

paper even if it is only a slight modification. This has continued to be true as UWRT 1102 has

been the class I have struggled with the most during my first year of college. I felt that I had

mastered basic writing at the end of my junior year of highschool. I didnt think was an eloquent

author or informative scientific reporter, but I thought I had the skills to make me successful in

college. As the semester has continued, this has proven itself to not be the case. My grammar

and mechanics have many issues and my ability to formulate my opinions clearly are not at an

acceptable level.

I was feeling rather validated in my writing at the beginning of the semester. I felt like I

provided a rather unique approach the assignment and that I was able to accurately express my

relationship with writing and reading over time. It seemed like I gave a deep, multi-faceted and

personal reflection and going forward it was a good reminder at the importance of learning how

to write. I also really challenged my thinking when we discussed grammar. Grammar was so

frustrating to me as many of the rules felt esoteric and irrelevant and when you said that there

was true definition of the proper way to write, It led to some understanding that grammar was

important for understanding. AS I reflected upon grammar it really opened my eyes to some of

the trends I have when I write. I love to use contrast to create understandings and I rely on it
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like a crutch. I have attempted to transition in ways that do not use some form of comparison

and it legitimately threw me off of my rhythm.

At the beginning of the semester, I was skeptical about using up to 10 minutes just to

write in our journals.. It seemed juvenile and like a waste of time. I am so glad that this is

something that we do at the beginning of class. Whether I have extraneous activities that are

impacting my ability to focus or if I am simply tired or unfocused, writing about whatever is on

my mind focuses my thoughts and prepares me to learn. As a (hopeful) future educator, It has

given me some ideas as to how to transition my students between subjects and how to focus

them after the enter the classroom.

Once discourse communities entered the conversation both my In class experience and

confidence in my ability to properly research and write have dwindled. I understood the concept

of a discourse community at its core level. I struggled to find communities that I was a part of

but I really understood rather early on what a discourse community was. The first time I felt

completely out of sorts in the class, However, was when we attempted to go through and define

the different aspects of our community (artifacts, power, etc..) I felt left in the dust. I was trying

to think critically about my topic and I couldnt simply come up with an answer to most of these

categories. In looking back, this is likely because I chose a discourse community that was in

some ways too large and in others to far behind closed doors. My church has over 11,000

attenders but it seems like only a 100 or so people deal with the inner workings of the church and

legitimately know the issues and problems within the church. I also ran into many issues when

we started looking into finding academic and scholarly sources for our discourse communities.

My church is not a standard church and very little research has been done on it. On top

of this, most people who leave churches like mine tend to keep quiet about the disagreeances as
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they do not feel that it is beneficial to confuse and complicate the Church going experience for

the members they had grown to know so well. As I defined my topic and what I wanted to

research I realized that there was not even a lot of applicable research for my broader topic

which ended up being lookism (or Looksism). I had focused too deeply into what community I

wanted to explore and simply ignored the evidence that it would be nearly impossible.

When it came time for my topic proposal, I scoured the web for endless hours to barely

have enough support to create a proposal. The last month of class has likely been the most

confused I have ever been in an academic setting. Even when I have missed a math class and I

was not familiar with the some of the terms being used, I could generally follow along. The last

month has been uncomfortable because it has revealed that I am less of a competent writer and

researcher than I once realized and because my topic has been rather obscure.

I have really gained a lot from certain aspects of this class. As a teacher, watching the

way that you have created relevant conversation among students and used different tools to

make people think differently about ideas and concepts that they have been trained to do in one

way has given me ideas for the future. Reflecting upon the importance of reading, writing, and

grammar has really allowed me to take a step back and examine a topic I have been studying

since Kindergarten. However, I really hope that the latter half of the semester will allow me to

have a more indepth understanding of how to correctly research and write a formal paper in a

way that is not formulaic and is truly and inquiry.