Ryan Wild

WRDS 1104
12/1/2021

Final Reflective Letter to WRDS 1104

Before choosing this class on degree works, I had begun writing in my journal every

night to keep so called mental tabs on myself, and for the prospect of reading them in the future

as a form of self-reflection. All my writings took an informal genre and were mainly summaries

of my day with tangents writing how I felt throughout the day. This insightful writing helped

writing become more fluid to me and helped me compose my thoughts into literature for a

potential audience.

WRDS allowed me to use this fluidity of writing I had recently developed and put it to

use with topics ranging from researching specific questions that impact the economic field I’m

interested in pursuing. The research aspect of this paper had me researching writing in online

investing forums and how the diction used by users can help attract the new generation of

investors. I was asked to design a short narrative about my first time falling in love with

literature and the process of me learning to be proud of my work. Through this assignment I was

able to look back and transcribe my thoughts on literature and how they changed throughout the

story. All the assignments in WRDS 1104 were given to students with the emphasis of how they

could be related to the real world. We listened and wrote about multiple TED Talks which all

focused on informing the audience about developing specific real-world skills. My personal

favorite of these talks was Alex Honnold, he used his personal story about solo rock climbing

and turned his lecture into one of personal growth with an emphasis on practice.
 Peer review was one of the few things I was worried about in this class. I had never been

good with it in the past and would normally just partner up with friends and not actually review

their paper. Writing this now I understand how much that hindered my work. By challenging

myself to provide strong peer review on my groups works I learned that peer review isn’t just

about spell checking or grammar checking someone’s assignment, its about the comprehension,

you are the first person other than the author to read their work and its your job to help them

make it their best work. Revision is a constant process performed by self-reflection and

discussion amongst peers. Through multiple peer reviews assigned throughout the semester I was

able to build a strong system for reviewing peer’s papers.

My most important work was my research paper. In the past I had struggled with research

papers and most other genres of writing other than narrative writing. I learned some useful

strategies when writing this paper for example, the multiple different ways to narrow down a

search for information on the Atkins database, which I’m sure I will use for the rest of my

college career. This assignment also helped me to review the basics of citation and MLA format

as all of our assignments would be written in MLA format. I’m sure in my future field of study

this information and techniques that I learned in this assignment will be crucial to my success.

Coming into this course I was confident with my narrative writing and use of personal

experience. I was concerned with my ability to transfer that skill to more research or academic

based writing. With the help of multiple research-based assignments and feedback from my

professor, I feel confident in my research-based writing that I can stick to that specific topic and

genre when writing. I used this assignment as an opportunity to ask a question about a topic I

was passionate about and collect significant data to inform my audience of the effects of this

topic.
 The process of creation for the E-Portfolio assignment allowed me to go back and reflect

on my work and revise anything I saw fit to do so. In the reflection process I concluded that this

class allowed me to take what I had learned from previous assignments and put that knowledge

to use on the next one allowing for growth in my writing skills overall. For example, writing

feels natural to me now, not like a chore like it did in the past. I watched myself develop a

system for revision and rereading my papers to produce high quality work, I created a mental

check list of essentials all my work must have depending on the genre of writing. The E-

Portfolio assignment also taught me how to create a website using Weebly.com which granted I

don’t think was the main goal of the assignment, but it is a good skill to learn. As I create the

final draft of the website and my reflective writing, I can find pride in knowing it is my best

work.

WRDS 1104 taught me many things but most importantly it gave me a different more

positive viewpoint on writing that high school lacks. WRDS 1104 taught me that writing is lead

by me, its not just written by me but I can write about things I’m interested in, I can write about

my past and my future. I write what I want to write, and this is where high school seems to fail

students in the sense that they create writing to be this enemy of low effort papers and passages

that bore students and lead to dull papers. Writers are nothing special, they are like you and I,

people, everyone can be and has been a writer and that all forms of literature are accompanied by

writing. WRDS 1104 taught me to be proud of not just my writing but all my work and, to

continue to work hard. Thank you, professor.