I started this class amid a project to improve my writing, which has been successful. In this class, I expected to improve my writing drastically to be on par with the average college student, but I did not know that I would improve in style and manner as much as I did. Throughout just three written essays in this class, classwork, and some homeworks, I improved my writing in various ways, expressed through the fulfillment of most of the Course Learning Outcomes. Through my success in the Course Learning Outcomes, I feel I was able to flourish in this class.

Looking at the Course Learning Outcomes, I have succeeded in many of them. First of all, I have successfully “acknowledge[d] your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw[n] on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility.” During a thesis workshop, I found out that I needed context for my researched subculture position paper’s topic by talking with people in my class about my thesis. I listened to their suggestions on incorporating context, and I used those suggestions to improve my introduction to the paper. Through this collaborative process, I also met the goal to “develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.” Fulfilling this goal through partaking in peer reviews was a mixed bag of successes and failures. For my peer reviews for the artifact essay, I did not fulfill the prompt, which resulted in a low quality for the reviews, and little to no valuable advice for my peers. For my interview essay and researched subculture position paper peer reviews, however, I followed the instructions precisely and put a lot of effort into them. Because of this, my interview essay and researched subculture position paper peer reviews were much more detailed than the artifact essay peer reviews, dramatically improving their quality of advice for my peers’ work.

I also succeeded in this class by figuring out how to “enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment,” areas I have become stronger in over the past semester. For example, from the revision and editing video, I learned that it is nice to take breaks between edits, something I previously was not doing, and something which was harming my essay quality. Soon after the video, I began to take breaks, and it made my editing much more productive than before. I also succeeded in negotiating “your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation.” For the interview paper, by smoothing out the interview’s flow and by considering people’s knowledge of the artist and tattoo subculture, I was able to think about the rhetorical situation. Finally, for the researched subculture position paper, I had to consider the rhetorical situation for the Deadhead subculture, and additionally, I feel that I was able to negotiate that successfully. For all three essays, I followed the prompt and obeyed the general standards for papers like these, which helped me follow “conventions of genre [and] medium.” I also have begun to engage in “genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond.” I have done multimodal compositions in all of my essays. In my artifact essay, I used narration and description, two modes of composition; for my interview essay, I also used narration and description; and I used description, exposition, and argumentation for my researched subculture position paper. Through using these rhetorical modes, I attained a high quality of work. However, I was not able to write across disciplinary contexts, as I never learned how to do it in this class, and I did not use genre analysis, as I never used model texts to help me understand how to compose a particular paper, and so it never applied to my situation.

I believe I was able to successfully “formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing.” My thesis, “While people may think that Deadheads are a group of washed-out hippies, as the stereotypes about them say, they are a vibrant subculture with rituals, behaviors, and a religious aspect,” was effective because it was clear, concise, debatable, and I expressed it throughout my body paragraphs. I also managed to “practice using various library resources, online databases, and the internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects.” The Course Learning Outcome was hard to fulfill as JSTOR was difficult to navigate; however, I was able to find credible sources as shown in my researched subculture position paper. I also “strengthen(ed) your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources).” Through this class, I learned how to execute the three strategies of summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting as well as how to cite in APA, as evidenced by doing both in the “Using Your Sources Worksheet.” Finally, through a video called “Summarizing, Paraphrasing, Direct Quotes, & APA format w audio,” I learned how to integrate quotes in my essay. The video also helped me integrate my paraphrasing and summarizing into my paper through a bit of retooling, and the source searching and integration dramatically improved my researched subculture position paper.

After one semester of learning how to write for the social sciences, my journey has only just begun. It has been successful and worthwhile so far, with many techniques learned and essays written. After this class, I will use the techniques that I have learned and continue my growth by writing for classes, employment, and in my personal life.

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