Saladino 1

Alyssa Saladino

Jack Visnaw

WRTG 121

December 17, 2019

Final Reflection

After many nights of studying late and staying up to the early hours of the morning with

anxiety, the semester is finally coming to an end. My classwork load has been absurd, and my

medical classes didn’t have nearly as much homework as my art classes, which you would think

would be the opposite. So I am very thankful that I don’t have to study for another final,

otherwise I might lose it. I am glad that the pacing for our assignments in WRTG 121 were well

spaced out and gave plenty of opportunities to alter and fix our work. I am also thankful that it

isn’t one of those classes that is assignment after assignment. I think there was a good amount of

classwork and assignments. We could learn the subjects and get help, and not be overwhelmed

with homework. I feel like there are a lot of things that I have learned in this class that I have not

learned in any of my previous classes.

When we got the news for Project #1, my internal voice said, “Oh snap! You don’t know

how to write a research proposal!”. I didn’t know how to write any kind of proposal, actually. I

googled examples of proposals to help guide me in writing one. I found a business proposal, and

thought it sounded very professional, so I used that as my guide for writing my own. Little did I

know, that a business proposal is far from a research proposal. I went on my own little journey

writing about my recycling bins, and I proposed a course of action and did a little research. I was

under the impression that I was supposed to do light research for this portion, and continue the
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rest for the actual research paper. I turned it in, and realised when I was doing the peer review for

one of my classmates, mine looked completely different. I wasn’t supposed to research yet, I was

supposed to be asking for permission to do the research. Also, I wasn’t supposed to create a plan

of action any time during the project, maybe suggest the topic in the following projects, but

never a definitive solution.

What I have learned from the project as a whole, not the technicalities of it, but the lesson

behind it, is to create a proposal. The first draft was rough, but after being steered back in the

right direction, and had my mistakes corrected, I effectively learned how to construct a proposal.

I technically learned how to make two different kinds, business and research, but the latter is

what really mattered and what I learned from it. From Project #1, I learned how to become more

persuasive in my writing. We also touched base on ethos, pathos, and logos, a concept I forgot

about in high school, but very important in all writing. Overall the lesson in Project #1 is to learn

how to enact rhetoric, and doing so by creating a persuasive tone and style in writing.

Project #2 had me stressing out at first, but when it was over, I thought it wasn’t really

that bad. Digging into the research was a bit grueling, though. Since the focus of the research

was specific to Eastern Michigan University’s campus, it was hard to find information on the

topic. I did a lot of searching and came across statistics from other universities and what they did

in regards to recycling around campus. It was also hard to find credible research on the amount

of recycling bins and the convenience of them since my project revolved around the question of

“Is there enough recycling bins around EMU’s campus?”. Also not only gathering information

from credible sources, but asking students about their opinion on the issue pushed me out of my
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comfort zone. My personal research was just a quick survey, and I went up to five random people

for it. Well, actually eight people, three turned me down when I asked if they wanted to take my

survey. I wanted to have more for a more accurate number, but I thought five was a good number

to cut it off at given that a million things were going on at once. When it came time to write the

paper, I was stressed. I have never written a paper so long before. The most pages in a paper that

I wrote was back in high school and it was six pages long. Then I took the equivalent of WRTG

120, and the largest paper I wrote was six pages as well. Once I had the actual content, it was

easy to just blabber on about it, but I felt stumped for a long time writing it. I’d say finding the

right sources was the hardest part, the second being the length of the writing. All in all, I made it,

I survived Project #2.

Through this project, I learned how to find credible resources. I found out where to

access a wealth of knowledge online, not through websites, but through databases. I learned how

to practice different research methods. I developed primary research by surveying and gathering

data specific to EMU on a topic that was current. I also learned how to analyze the topic and the

research as well. Alongside that, I learned about style conventions. I developed an awareness of

conventions for finding information needed for the research process. Through Project #2, I

learned how to conduct effective research and different methods to find credible information for

my paper.

Project #3 is something I looked forward to. I love building things and creating tangible

objects to represent my work. Well, I was mostly excited for the droid model portion and the

schematic to go with it. Not so much the ignite presentation. From previous experience, when I
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present in front of a class, I tend to forget everything I rehearsed. Even with notecards, my script

escapes my mind. When I heard that we have to come up with a five minute speech, my heart

dropped. I prepared for it, rehearsed it many times, and made notes. They slides changing every

15 seconds really helped, because it kept me on track. I was extremely nervous to present, and I

was jittery the whole class period. Thankfully I got it over with, and didn’t completely mess it

up. When it came time for the droid model and the matching schematic, I was so excited. I had

this whole plan in my head. Then I got really sick and had to stay home an extra week and did

not have the same supplies at home as I did at school. So the execution of building the droid was

not as planned. Then I made the schematic fairly easily with some 3D software I have on my

computer, but I made sure to make it after building the droid model in case it turned out different

than I initially planned (which it did). I thought the CSW was interesting, and I liked presenting

the droids to passerbyers. I think I grew from this project.

What I can take out of Project #3 is that I learned how to apply multi-modal design. I

learned how to compose my work in other formats. I used digital technologies to produce the

slideshow for the ignite presentation and for the droid schematic. It wasn’t just limited to

electronic formatting, I interpreted my paper into a figurine for the droid model portion of the

project. It showed the importance of having different formats and mediums to present the same

body of work. Maybe it can reach out to another crowd to get them involved in the other work as

well.

Then Project #4 followed shortly after. I recently figured out how to create a weebly

page, so when it was presented as an option for our final project, I took that opportunity.

Constructing the website has been pretty easy. At first I thought it would be hard, but it’s simple
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to follow. Hopefully my page meets the criteria for grading! Overall for Project #4, I learned the

importance of reflective interaction. This is a way to share my work with others. What better

way to share my research than to post it on a website? Another example of when we use

reflective interaction in class is when we do peer reviews. It gives us another set of eyes to help

notice things that can be different in our writing. I believe that this class has done a good job in

showing the importance of sharing opinions and help with one another’s writing through

reflective interaction.

Overall, there were many things that I learned from this class, and in each project

individually. I feel like my quality could have been a bit better if I didn’t have an insane amount

of work in other classes. I think the amount of time in between projects was just fine, but my

other classes made it hard for me to get my work done. I feel like if I had that extra time for

writing what I needed to write, the quality would have been better. In terms of quantity, I think

we had an appropriate amount of work in this class. Not too much, and not too little. My quality

of my work, personally I know could be better, but overall I find the quantity just fine.

I mentioned that I learned a lot from this class, but I feel like more of my learning was

towards the beginning of the class. I learned a lot from recapping ethos, logos, and pathos

towards the beginning and coming up with graphic organizers, like a web for planning. These are

basic ideas that I forgot about, but relearning the concepts really helped. Also I learned a lot in

the beginning of the semester because of Project #1, and the whole proposal lesson. Of course,

the lessons from then on built upon themselves, and I still learned throughout the term. I just felt

that a learned the most essential things towards the beginning of the semester.
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As I mentioned in each project individually, I learned all of the course outcomes intended

for this semester. Project #1 really narrowed into the rhetorical process, although it applies to all

of the projects, it was the main takeaway of that section in this course. The second project

showed the importance of both the research process and style conventions through digging up

credible research for our papers and documenting it for the purpose of context. As I mentioned

about Project #3, we learned about multimodal design by creating our ignite presentations as

well as droid models and schematics. The whole transformation project was to show the

effectiveness of different mediums all containing the same content. The final project is important

in regards to reflective interaction. Someone out there is reading this right now, which is an

example of sharing my work with others.

Outside of this class, I see myself using all of these course outcomes in some way, shape,

or form. Now I know how to write a proposal! What I know now is how to write persuasive text,

and that can be very useful in whatever I take on in the future. I know how to do proper research

now as well, so finding resources should be a breeze from now on. I hope. I have become more

aware of style conventions, so that will reflect in my future works if I have any. Multimodal

design was the most interesting concept to me, so I definitely think I will use it in the future. Last

but not least, I believe that every day I can use reflective interaction. I can help look over my

friends papers, or they can look at mine to get a new perspective and edit it. I’m always asking

for a second opinion, so I already do apply this every day. I even did it while writing about the

ignite presentation a few paragraphs back because I wrote something that shouldn’t be in a paper,

although it would have made it funnier, my friend reviewed it and told me to take it out. So I
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apply many of these concepts now, but there are many that I will apply in the future as well.

Overall, I am thankful for everything I have learned, and I look forward to growing from it.