Hagen Wheeler Anthony Borrero English 1101 December 5th 2012

My Final Reflection:
At the very beginning of the year walking into Mr. Borreros I was introduced to a English class like I had never seen. The traditional English class that I had expected was nothing like I was about to experience. We were all taught that literacy goes beyond being able to read. Being literate can mean knowing how to drive a car. The class taught me that a text can be an apple and that it is up to me of where I decide to draw the line of what cant be text. I have a different view of what good writing consists of now. I believe good writing can be written by anyone as long as it grabs the readers attention and holds it. The writing must also be structured good and focus on little narratives. I believe this class has challenged me and made me grow as a writer in multiple areas. Ive had to take risks and make decisions throughout the semester that have impacted my works hugely. For example, I had originally wanted to observe Charlotte Fire for my ethnography. That did not work out for me and I had to overcome and adapt by using my hometown firehouse. I also ended up having to change my purpose statement about three times to make it work for my project. Other decisions I have made in the class have been trying to always use the topics most relevant to me. By writing about firefighting I believe it has allowed me to grow as a writer. By keeping my topics interesting to me it has inspired to do my best work because it is my passion.

For almost all of my papers I have written and rewrote my introductions and conclusions multiple times. I have worked at improving my introductions and conclusions. I have gone to other peers for their advice on my writings and they all have helped tremendously. I still feel like this is my weakest spot and I know if I want to continue to grow as a writer I must continue to work at it. I feel like one of the best things we done in class that helped me improve as a writer was speed dating. Speed dating allowed me to get input from multiple people. Everyone I dated had really good advice and it was all different. I took notes of what they all said and then applied them later to my work. Overall it was good to get multiple opinions on my work. I believe I have grown as a writer in multiple areas. My understanding of what good writing is and what it should consist of has changed a lot from the beginning of class. I believe good writing doesnt have a certain page length as long as it addresses all of points of the paper fully. I also believe that the paper should have a strong introduction and conclusion along with smooth transitions throughout. I feel like the area I have grown the most in was learning to use little narratives. At the beginning of the class I had no clue what a little narrative was and hardly ever used them in previous writing classes. Now I know to focus on specific events in my writing. I tried to use lots of little narratives in my ethnography to help explain my thoughts such as talking about reading smoke. In conclusion, I still have a long ways to go to polish off my writing skills but this course has certainly helped me to improve.