Dear Reader,

As this semester comes to an end, I think the best thing to do before finals is to reflect

on what we have learned in each class. Looking back at some of my writing from the beginning

of this semester had made me realize how much my writing skills have developed over this

semester. My goals at the beginning of the semester included to start enjoying writing papers

and to improve my writing skills. I would like to believe that University writing 1103 has made

me become a more skilled and efficient writer. Starting out, I would struggle with free writing

because I couldn’t think about what to write and I would often just sit in class with a blank

sheet of paper trying to force myself to write. Now I am confident that I could sit down and free

write about any topic whenever I feel the desire to do so because I have learned different

methods of creative writing.

My most important work in this class is by far the extended inquiry project. Being able

to choose any topic I wanted to write about was new to me, so I struggled with picking a topic

that actually interested me. This is what led to an indifference towards the inquiry project. Even

after picking a topic that interested me – self-driving cars – I struggled with wanting to work on

it. I kept putting it off and telling myself I would work on it later and I would often not work on

it “later”. However, when I finally managed to work on my topic proposal and annotated

bibliography, I wound up starting my rough draft after finding enough information. Once I

started learning about self-driving cars I got more into my topic and the extended inquiry

project. Writing the bibliography really helped me with writing my drafts and final copies of the

paper because it helped me determine if my sources were credible and had relevant

information. Writing the draft and final versions of the extended inquiry project helped me
improve my overall writing skills because my paper was a mixture of an informative essay and

persuasive essay. Writing this paper helped improve my writing skills by teaching me how to

find relevant and credible information for my extended inquiry project. I hope to be able to

take what I have learned researching self-driving cars for my extended inquiry project and apply

the research process to my future classes.

In this class, my strengths were taking people’s advice seriously. When my draft was

peer reviewed, I took all everyone’s comments into account when writing my final copy of the

extended inquiry project. I believe that this is what made my paper better than it could have

been without the help of others.

In this class, my weakness was struggling to write in my writer’s notebook and

procrastinating. I often found myself waiting until the last few minutes before class to start

writing my reflection for homework. In class, whenever we would write for the first fifteen

minutes, I would just sit there with a blank page until the last minute or two of writing time.

This class has helped me improve my ability to write when I have the time to because it has

given a way for me to write down any ideas I have or plan what I need to do each day.

I had a love/hate relationship with the eportfolio. I both liked and disliked going through

my writer’s notebook. It was nice going back and seeing how my writing has progressed over

the semester. However, disliked going back and reading my old entries because I know how

bad they were. They were poorly worded and often had a lot of grammatical errors, making

them hard to read.

 At the beginning of the year, I wasn’t sure why this class was a requirement. At the end

of this semester, I know see why. Uwrite has been the main reason my writing has greatly

improved in the short span of a few months. I would encourage anyone who has doubts about

their desire or need to take this class and to take a university writing course. It may not seem

clear at first, but it is very helpful in improving your writing skills while also teaching you what

makes an average writer a good writer.