Final Portfolio Reflective Essay 1g3g2z

Dear Roberta, I’ve come such a long way in my development as a writer this quarter! As a math major, academic writing is certainly not my strongest subject. I’d be much more comfortable writing a proof or solving problem sets than writing an essay. This class put me out of my comfort zone and was at times difficult but I’m very excited about how much improvement I see after writing these final revisions of my writing projects. Through this course, my whole approach to writing has changed. I used to be satisfied with writing a paper once and being done with it. However, I have learned the importance of first and second order thinking and how they each contribute to writing effectively. The only way these two modes of thinking can complement each other is through writing drafts and revising writing. I now understand the importance of editing and revision as exemplified through the writing projects in my final portfolio. For my final portfolio, I revised WP 1 and WP 2. I chose these two because they had a lot of room for improvement. Reading over them before beginning revision, I realized I was very confused about the role of project builders and was trying to build an essay that fit to the project builders rather than use the ideas from the project builders to complement my essay. Taking advice from a student in class, I opened two black documents and started with a clean slate for both of the WPs. I tried to focus more on writing new essays which addressed the problems I saw in my original WP rather than making alterations to the existing WP. In my final draft of Writing Project 1, most of my changes dealt with my thesis, topic sentences, and structure of argument. I first made my thesis more complex and made a stronger claim as a guide for the rest of the essay rather than just making a true statement like I did in my original writing project. I then wrote all of my topic sentences, again focusing on making strong claims and providing complete overviews of the content of the paragraphs. I then filled in my

evidence and argument, making sure that the argument followed logically through the paragraphs rather than having dist paragraphs like in my original WP 1. Lastly, I strengthened my concluding sentences, making a point to restate the main ideas of the paragraph and transition effectively into the next topic sentence. In my final draft of Writing Project 2, I clarified my topic in the introduction, made stronger claims in my thesis and topic sentences, and focused on making my argument consistent throughout the entire paper. My original WP2 did a very poor job of explaining my topic and stating the authors, articles, and disciplines. In my new introduction, I outline all of these very clearly. My thesis statement now makes a strong claim about why biology is a better discipline to approach my topic rather than just stating that biology is better. I then wrote complex claims in my topic sentences, providing a guide for what is argued in each paragraph. Most importantly, I wrote every paragraph to my main claim so that my argument remained clear throughout the entire essay. Looking at my original WP2, I was trying to use the project builders which analyzed both good and bad examples of evidence from the articles which made my argument unclear. Through these changes, my WP2 became a significantly more cohesive essay. Overall, I think these revised writing projects exemplify the power of revision and the necessity for both first and second order thinking. I think the original versions of my WPs represented more first order thinking than second order thinking because they had good ideas that were poorly executed. I approached this final revision process with second order thinking trying to make my papers clear, logical, and effective. I am very happy with the results and I’m amazed how much of a difference thoughtful revision has made! I hope it is evident how much time and thought I put into these final papers.

Moving forward, I have so many new tools to use when I am faced with the challenge of writing. For academic assignments, I know I will use the concepts of first and second order thinking and shitty first drafts to help expedite my writing process. As for other genres of writing, I have learned the importance of knowing your audience, purpose, and context. Being able to produce an appropriate text is so important in every aspect of life! Prior to this class, I never really thought about how we write to cater to a specific audience. It now seems obvious that of course we write with a specific audience in mind but the formalization of this idea didn’t resonate with me until now. This is probably one of my biggest takeaways from this course: know your audience. I will certainly keep this concept as well as all of the other concepts we learned in mind as I move forward.

Sincerely, Megan Franke