My writing abilities were very dull at the start of the course, but they required some polishing. I was always adept at gathering facts and setting the groundwork. Along with that, I’ve always found writing to be uncomplicated after I’ve established a solid foundation. However, when the semester started, it became clear to me that I required more practice and knowledge on reading and writing, which I lacked on. My reading and writing needed to be improved, but it wasn’t difficult to do. To begin with this semester, it was a lot more difficult than last semester as for time management, I became more focus on external duties then on my school work. I do really regret not using the writing center during this semester, the writing center could have probably and would have made the assignments and work a little bit easier to understand or a little lighter. But I think that with Professor Cipriani feedback when it came to big assignments, it helped me and gave me more clarity on what I should when revising my assignments to make them better. Specially for my Educational Narrative, I couldn’t really understand the assignment in general as much is I read it over and over it really did not make any sense. This reminded me of when I wrote “they repeated things to me over and over as if telling me one more time would make me comprehend.” (Educational narrative) But as read the requires and search examples of educational narratives, I understood the concept of an educational narrative and I was ready to write and go down my memory lane.
I could say my first submission of my educational narrative was a “Shitty First Drift” as the author quoted “the first draft is the child’s draft” (Shitty First Drift by Anne Lamott) meaning that it not perfect or it won’t make any sense. And my work was exactly that, I knew that I had to go back and rearrange paragraphs and delete, a lot to make sure that my ideas were clear and to make sure show that the memories in my educational journey was in order from begin to end. As well as, when conducting research during the drafting process of Unit 2 Annotated Bibliography help understand that need to make some major changes on the order and logic when it came down to working my annotated bibliography. The changes helped me by identifying mistakes in my reasoning and focusing on my research and also to sources that would help clarify my thesis more. My rewriting process was heavily influenced by the professor. Revision is important in the process of developing and finding arguments because, when I revise based on feedback, some arguments must be reworked for the reader to comprehend the reason I wanted to write the paper. Revisions also allowed me to concentrate on the flow of my writing and whether or not all of my sources complied and my reasonings made sense and complement one another. In order to make my paper as sound professional and be as orderly as possible, I have learnt to look through my essays numerous times therefore I can identify any mistakes, even grammatical ones.
Toolwire was a great benefit this for me semester using this program to learn about grammar, how to structure our sentence. As well as learning about the writing process and knowing to recognize a great thesis statement or learning how to make one. I also learned how to create strong positions when writing a thesis statement. Toolwire helped me understand the different types of sentences such as simple sentences, compound sentences and complex sentences. I believe that one form of sentence that I was able to identify in one of my essays was a compound sentence. A compound sentence is when you have two or more independent clauses combined with a coordinating conjunction. For example, in my writing for my annotated bibliography was “We only have till a couple of years to help the earth survive but if we begin now to try to improve and attempt to educate ourselves on how to save it or make it better, for the animals, nature such the forest, lakes, and oceans and ourselves.”(Annotated Bibliography) I am able to identify that this sentence uses multiple commas and both a coordinating junction such as “and”. Furthermore, the Toolwire program is certainly essential to many college students like myself because as we continue to grow and our mind receive more and more information throughout the years we tend to forget certain crucial basic things when we write essays things such as remembering to capitalize in the begin of a sentence and this is something that we forget because we are so used to writing in a texting format where it does not matter how you write. But Toolwire also teaches us how to structure our sentences properly, to how to spell words properly, to structure our paragraphs when writing an essay to help us improve.
Overall, this course helped me become a more dedicated writer and reader. The begin of the semester in my time capsule I stated, “I hope that you have built confidence in your writing because I believe that you are willing and able to write “college worth level essays.””(Time Capsule) I think that have gotten better there is always more room the grow and learning now I understand and know what faults to look for and what topics to concentrate on when writing. I’ve recognized the importance of “less is more” so that I can filter out any extraneous and irrelevant material and concentrate more on what will directly get my idea through the reader. With my professor’s input, I was able to widen my thinking and look at other sides of my issue in order to acquire as much information as possible and create a more complete, correct, and structured in my essays. I am confident that the strategies I learned throughout this course, as well as the adjustments I have made, will help me. I believe I can use what I learned this semester in my writing in other situations such as in my future job as a dental hygienist when the job requires many types of written communication such as writing letters, correspondences and writing in clinical records this is how my writing experience will benefit me.
