Dear Professor Johnson,

I must admit; I do believe I have become a better writer since the first day of class. I

came in very intimidated by the class and concept of Writing 2 since I did have to start off the

school year with Writing 1. I really should have just relaxed because the things I have learned

this quarter, although challenging, have shaped me into a better writer.

One of the things that really helped me grow as a writer was peer review. I am a rather

shy person and was allergic to the idea of peer review and absolutely hated the idea of having

someone criticize my writing. However, peer review has helped me become so much more

confident in my writing. I value other opinions and it is one of the only ways I was able to revise

my work and make it better. Besides the obvious peer review, understanding genre helped me

tremendously. I thought I knew what genre was, but boy was I wrong. Going into in-depth about

genre and its functions helped me with my writing. Doing writing projects and comparing

different genres and trying to understand its audience was eye opening. I never thought much

audience, but it all changed when we did writing projects 1, 2, and 3. Genre is truly all around us

and in Kerry Dirk’s “Navigating Genres” he makes a statement that stuck to me, “ Genre

functions as a social action and you can predict how they function rhetorically.” After our class

discussion on genre and the completion of Writing Project 1 I left that class wanting to talk about

genre more.

Throughout the course I learned how to properly analyze sources as well. I would have to

say analyzation was one of my weak points. I hated Writing Project 2 and its process with the

raging passion of a thousand’s suns. So, obviously I picked that essay to revise. Reading Dana

Lynn Discroll’s “Introduction to Primary Research” did help me quite a bit. However, I still

struggled to be able to collect data and try to take my findings and wrap them up as a “cohesive
systematic interpretation.” (Discroll). Trying to come up with three different literacy practices

was challenging at first but as much as I hated the assignment, I was able to learn quite a bit from

it. Identifying literacy practices is becoming easier.

Another struggle I had while working on writing project 2 was trying to find relevant

sources. An example is how I used a gym research study and its indirect hierarchy and tried to tie

that with spatial reasoning in geography. Working alongside Noelle, I was able to better

understand why that source did not work and was kind of wondering why I chose it. I a bit more

confident that the new source I used will help me a lot more and correlate more with the topic of

spatial reasoning and geography.

If I had more time (and patience) I would want to work on writing project 2 or 3 more. As

much as I dislike wp2 there is a lot I can do to change it and make it better. Same goes with wp3,

that was the most fun project to work on and if I had more time, I feel like it would have come

out how I had envisioned. All of my writing projects could have been stronger, and more time

would have allowed me to excel.

Over the course of this entire quarter, writing has become more important to me. I always

had a love for writing and saw its significance, but somehow through this course that

significance has grown. So much, that I plan to double major in English. Before I took this

course I never new how to write a research paper or properly cater a writing assignment based

off of what the audience is. I was able to take what I was learning in Writing 2 and apply it to my

other classes like geography and Latin America in film.

Being in this class has helped me not only grow as a writer, but as a person as well. I did

not expect to change as a person and for that I thank you. The things I have learned in this class
(and the previous) I will take with me when writing papers for other classes or simply writing for

my own enjoyment.

Best,

Yvette Guevara