Rodriguez 1

Roberto Rodriguez Jr.

Dr. Teresa Scott

ENGL 1301-102 FL21

30 November 2021

My Final Reflection

Throughout the semester, we as English 1301 students were assigned several tasks that

would change the course of our essays and future work. At the start, I thought that it would be

difficult for me to complete these college leveled assignments because of how my decision to

come into TAMIU was very quick. And as expected, it was struggle to get used to university

level writing; however, as time went on and more work continue to pile up, I was able to

overcome the obstacles that were thrown at me. I was able to successfully complete three-unit

essays with the help of my peers, instructor, and even myself. With the knowledge that I gained

and struggles I went through during the course; I am now able to say that this class has prepared

me for things to come.

The first thing that I was assigned to do as an English 1301 student was to write my first

draft essay for essay number one. It sounds really easy when you hear it, but when you are a

freshman college student not knowing what to expect it can be very difficult. I can relate this to

the saying that goes, easier said than done. Me as a student who is about to finish the course

clearly understands now what the prompt was asking for initially. I was asked to find a type of

genre that communicated to a community and determine how they were able to accomplish their

goal. My understanding of a genre at the beginning of the course was the different types of books

such as ‘romance,’ ‘horror,’ ‘folktale,’ etc. However, when we went into more detail, I later

found out that not only does genre refer to a type of book, but it also meant a form of
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communication to an audience. This truly confused me and sent my whole brainstorming into a

spiral. In the end, the community that I went with were, ironically, college students. The genre

that correlated with this were brochures or as people refer to them pamphlets. When I had finally

gotten the idea of what I was writing about, I was able to turn in my final draft and called it a

‘masterpiece.’ Little did I know, that present me would soon come to dislike it. I found a lot of

dead ends or vague examples that could have led to a continuous discussion, yet I stopped. So,

something that I decided to do in my final rerevised essays were to continue the discussion and

add even more examples than what it already had until I was pleased with the results. I went onto

the other essay and found that more changes could be made to it as well. The second essay was

about choosing three different communities within the same genre. I came up with a brilliant idea

of choosing three different types of books that reached out to different people. When I completed

the first, second, and final drafts, I was so proud of my work that I thought it was the perfect

essay. But in the end, it came spiraling down yet again. It was a very controversial essay that I

had made mainly because I did not know that they book covers I discussed were fan made, which

is something I did not state. When rerevised, I planned on stating in the introduction that there

was fan made book covers that I would be talking about throughout the essay. For this essay, it

was a success, and I was able to make it sound more thorough and cleared up any confusion for

my instructor to read and for those who will be reading it once my website is published. And for

my last essay, I would have to say that it was the easiest out of all of them. Although I am saying

that it is easy, that does not mean that I did not come across any difficulties. In this essay, I was

asked to analyze a peer reviewed article and state any rhetorical devices used to support the

authors’ claims and state if it was effective towards the audience. I decided that it would be

interesting to write about teen driving with ADAS. So, I found an article that successfully used
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ethos, logos, and pathos throughout. Some problems that I encountered when turning in my final

draft for this last essay was that I did not site some quotes correctly, I did not elaborate that much

on some topics, and I did not connect my paragraphs with the thesis with a concluding sentence.

Basically, the steps that I took to fix these mistakes were to simply incorporate and use my

instructor’s suggestions and feedback. I personally feel that all these changes that were made to

my essays will make them better than what they originally were. On the contrary, although this is

my final portfolio and I should have made it presentable, I did not go all out as I expected on my

website. I just did a simple layout that contained the necessary links and material. I decided to go

with a simple look because I wanted it to be organized and not confusing to anyone. I went with

a simple layout that contained a patterned background on the homepage and a gray and white

section that goes in a pattern on the “Extras” tab.

During my English 1301 class, we would learn new things when we would meet up with

our professor. Each discussion would consist of a homework that was due before class or a short

activity that was done in class. These homework assignments helped with the process of writing

my essays. For example, one of the first assignments that we did was relating to “Shitty First

Drafts” which was in our Lunsford book. This delt with first drafts and how they should not

always be perfect on the first try. With this homework assignment, I was able to realize that I did

not have to have a perfect essay on the first shot, there is a writing process for a reason. Aside

from the homework that we would be assigned, we would also come in contact with small

activities that I would be able to finish during the class. These activities would range from doing

a “Reverse Outline” to an “Invention Unit.” I personally think that these two different types of

activities influenced my revisions throughout my three essays because of the different topics or

targets that I needed to make my argument reasonable. Moreover, these activities would help
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guide me when I would be completely lost when given a new essay prompt. For example, on my

second essay, we did an “Invention” worksheet which helped me choose my genre and three

different communities. When I first started on this essay, I had simply chosen restaurant menus

because of how simple I thought it was. But I soon came to realize that they did not have any

differences, which was something that needed to be included in the essay. So over time and as

the due date came closer, I thought that although books would be a difficult thing to do, I just

went with it. Come to today, that essay turned out way better than I expected it to be and in my

opinion, probably way better than what the other one would have turned out to be.

Additionally, just because this course is an English class, that does not mean that I can

not use it for other classes. All the material covered will be able to help me in other courses

because I now have an expanded knowledge in understanding rhetoric devices and how to

analyze things on another level. Like I have stated in other reflective essays before, I feel that

English 1301 material can easily be applied to other courses such as my National Government,

Art, and most of the science classes. Art and science classes require you to use a lot of analyzing

and second thought processes. Just like English, my National Government professor would ask

us to write short papers that would need for us to go into our textbook and support our claims

and to go into detail. The courses are examples that may require you to use your analytical skills

and critical thinking. However, I do feel that some material that was covered in English 1301

cannot be applied to Math courses or anything that is related to Math. For example, my College

Algebra and Chemistry class did not have any correlation to rhetorical devices or use anything

close to that sort of stuff. You are presented with many math equations, short statements, or word

problems rather than a full-length text. These skills, to me, are not very useful when it comes to

higher up Math courses.

Being able to go through three different prompts and essays has allowed me to pinpoint

my strengths and weaknesses which will help me later in any other writings I will have. A

strength that I was able to point out from all my essays is that there was not one single comment

or feedback to my thesis statements and use of evidence. So, I take this as a good sign that my

strengths in essays are the hooks, thesis statements, and evidence. Something that I find as a

weakness of mine in writing would have to be that I could not be specific or elaborate more on

my ideas. Since the beginning of my writing journey, I found it very hard to be specific because I

thought that if I found it obvious, everyone else would too. However, when I would read through

my instructor’s feedback and reread on the sentence, she told me to be specific on, I would catch

that sometimes I did not even understand what I was talking about. This can also play a big

factor into elaborating more too. Elaborating was a big problem on my first two essays as well. I

would cut the discussion short and now that I look back on my essays to be rerevised, I see that I

can add more to it and go more into detail. I guess that you can put it as I was being too vague

throughout some paragraphs or in some cases throughout the whole essay. These two things have

now become some of my strengths in writing because on my last essay, I had very minimal

feedback regarding specificity and elaboration.

Lastly, I think that the most challenging aspect of putting my website together was the

fact that I have never done anything like this. When I finally decided to start the portfolio, I did

not know where to start because of how we did not have any examples this time around to give

me an idea of what to do. However, it started to get least challenging when it came to choosing

the project material or the things that were needed to be included to make the portfolio

acceptable. My professor was kind enough to go into detail and provide my class with how

everything needed to be. For example, we needed to have everything organized in a way that
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could be easy for the person using our site to navigate through. Additionally, I would have to say

that the designing aspect of the website was the most challenging because I was conflicted on

whether my instructor would like it or not. But, in the end I just went with a plain white and gray

design that just made everything seem very elegant in a way. To be fair, I thought that the

controls of the website would be difficult to understand. But again, thanks to my professor I am

able to say that the least challenging aspect of this website was getting the hang of the controls.

The controls or what you could add to the website was very self-explanatory, all I had to do was

drag icons into the webpage and a title or textbox bar would pop up. I was able to get the hang of

this quickly because of a video that my instructor provided for my class that went into detail

about setting up a free account and how everything worked on Weebly. Being able to navigate

through all the features easily did not overwhelm me as much as I expected.

Without a doubt, my identity as a writer has changed greatly from when I first started. I

have progressed and learned over the course of the semester because of the different topics that

we have discussed. These discussions would include communities, genre, and rhetoric devices

that would later help us with our essays. When assigned a prompt for new essays, I struggled

greatly for the first two essays since it was my first-time writing college level material. But as the

last prompt came around the corner, it seemed easier than the rest because of how the two

previous essays had strongly correlated to this final essay. When the essays have been

completed, we were faced with a task of making reflective essays and listing the things we

learned and how we can change the mistakes we made. And as a person who does not enjoy

writing essays or anything to do with English, I have come to the conclusion that this class has

changed those opinions slightly. I have grown to see that not only is it difficult to accomplish

some tasks, but it is very necessary for people to distinguish the factors into making essays such
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as being able to analyze different communities and genres, elaborating more on your topics and

being more specific in what you state. I can now say that compared to the start of the semester, I

am comfortable with my writing and most importantly, my identity as a writer has improved.