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Madison McQuagge

Dr. Sharity Nelson

ENG 1301-102

5 December 2023

Final Reflection Essay

Over the course of my English 1301-102 class I have learned skills that will set me up for

my future in not only other college courses, but in stressful moments. Although at times I was

overwhelmed and felt the workload pile up, I learned how to persevere. I did not give up through

the tough times, instead I learned to not only push through but succeed. In this course I learned

how to analyze physical documents, digital documents, and academic peer-reviewed journals that

will help me for future classes as being a better writer. I have also learned how to become an

organized writer by prewriting, planning, and drafting. While it did take me a while to find my

groove in the writing process, I did manage by essay three to give myself plenty of time to

complete the writing process.

Throughout this course I have learned that one of the most important parts of the writing

process is the drafting process. I learned to plan, revise and edit my papers several times to make

sure I have an essay that is well organized, focused and provides details.. The homework

assignment that I found most helpful to me was working on the essay outlines because it helped

me stay organized and brainstorm all the ideas I need in my essay. This helped me understand the

writing process because I was able to list all the main points of my essay which would lead into

paragraphs. After completing the outline I can start my draft by adding details and descriptions.

Learning about building an outline to help me out through the writing process will help me in

future courses because I will have stable and constructed outlines for my future writing
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assignments. For example, when I take my English STAAR test or English 1302 next semester, I

will be able to write a strong essay because this course has taught me how to make a clear

outline that meets the criteria of any essay prompt. Before I enrolled in this course I did not feel

comfortable as a writer. However, after taking this course I feel more confident that I can use the

skills that I learned as a writer to help me.

During this course, I have learned how to closely analyze pictures. The activity that

sticks out the most to me is the presentation during week 6 where Dr. Nelson helped us analyze a

NASA advertisement. We did not know the point of the picture, but as a class we analyzed the

picture detail by detail. Eventually, we were able to correctly identify the origin of the

advertisement, so this activity helped me learn the analysis process. The activity also helped me

learn to work through it because it taught me that even when the picture is busy and hard to

analyze, just start off by writing down everything you see. My initial reaction was to write down

the bright images in the picture and ignore the small . I learned that every detail matters in an

analysis so this course has taught me how to be thorough during the analysis process.

I have learnt from the process of revising that it is okay to have too much information

during your drafting process. For example, for my first draft I had some sentences that did not

belong in that area. However, during the revision process it was much easier for me to remove or

move around those sentences then it would have been to go back to my article and find a whole

new topic to write about. While revising my unit 3 essay, I made changes by removing my

excessive amount of quotes to change them to sentences of my own words. While citing and

quoting evidence was important to my essay, I needed more of my own work as said by my

professor. After going back and reading through my draft I realized that she was correct, so I

went back and started to revise my draft by removing the extra quotes that didn’t need to be in
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the paragraph. Another aspect of my essay I changed due to my professor’s feedback was my

introduction. In the first draft of my essay, I had too much information in my introduction, so I

moved the information to my body paragraphs where they belonged. I made these changes

because after getting feedback from my professor, I realized that while these changes were small,

they would make my essay more coherent. So, in the end the revision process helped craft my

essay into something that I was proud of.

The most challenging aspect of revising this essay one more time was having to remove

my quotes and creating my own sentences. The process of removing the quotes to create my own

sentences was very challenging for me because I had to make sure I wasn’t plagiarizing and

made sure the sentences were descriptive for my audience. This was important for me to

overcome because in the end my essay benefitted and it made me a better writer to not rely on

quotes to create a good essay. In the past, I have always believed that many quotes would make

the essay stronger, but now I know I can read these quotes and paraphrase them into my own

words and still have a strong essay. The least challenging part of revising this essay was writing

my second body paragraph because I had to describe a graph and the purpose of it. In essay 2 I

had to do an analysis of a picture. So whenever I had to analyze and describe the graph, I already

knew what to do. After essay 2, being descriptive of pictures or graphs came easily to me

because whenever my professor told me to expand on why the graph was placed in the peer

reviewed journal, I got to work and easily created a whole paragraph about the graph.

I made the choice of going back to the prompt and dissecting it to give the general

audience of my website a better understanding of the course concepts. I made my explanation in

my unit writing assignment understandable to someone who is unfamiliar with the genres of my

units by going into detail about what the assignment was and how I took the approach with my
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document. For example, in my explanation for essay two I explained the purpose of the

assignment. Also, I stated my audience with the visual text I chose, “Taylor Swift| The Eras

Tour” poster. Another example in my explanation for essay three I went in depth of my goal by

acknowledging that my goal was to combine my knowledge from essay one and essay two for

essay three. I also explained how the genre of the essay contributed to my goal of creating a

strong structured essay.

The most challenging part of this course was keeping track of the due dates with all of the

assignments. I am a high school student athlete, so I was stretched thin with this course

assignments and essays, my school work, practices, and games. However, I was able to persevere

and be successful in all my activities with the help of my mom. She taught me that I need to

become better organized by creating a calendar on my phone that keeps track of all assignments

and due dates. I arranged my schedule for Wednesdays to work on my high school assignments

and to be the main work day since I didn’t have any games or long practices in the middle of the

week. The biggest problem I faced in the analysis and writing processes was staying focused.

When I try to sit down and write my essays, I always get distracted on my phone and start

procrastinating. This caused me to start shutting off my phone to prevent me from getting

distracted from my work. It was extremely difficult for me to get started on the writing process,

however once I am able to force myself to start writing I usually am able to get a good writing

flow. To prevent myself from procrastinating in this class, I would give myself time over the

weekends to complete my work for this course ahead of time and not wait until the deadline. For

example, during the writing process of essay 1, it was the first writing assignment for this course

so I didn’t know what to expect. I procrastinated and ended up only giving myself two days to

complete the essay. I definitely learned my lesson from essay 1 because I had to stay up late to
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finish the assignment. As a result, I got better at giving myself more time during the week to

begin writing my assignments earlier. This caused me to have a better essay because I had more

time to plan and write my essay.

The least challenging aspect of this course was the peer review. As a student, I love to

help out my fellow peers and to receive their feedback. So, as I critiqued my peer’s paper it came

easily to me. The strengths I discovered in my analytical and writing skill sets was being able to

spot grammatical errors and unimportant sentences. For example, in my second peer reviewed

journal, I edited my classmate, Bryan Martinez’s paper. While reading his paper I was able to

spot grammatical errors, such as forgetting to use transition words and misspellings. The

strengths I received from my paper being peer reviewed was being able to get critiques and use

them to fix my paper. When my third essay was reviewed by my classmate, Belen Torres, I

received some feedback such as I had too much information in my introduction. So, being able to

use that feedback to revise my introduction strengthened my skill set of using constructive

criticism to my advantage to have a better paper.

Yes, I believe that this course has prepared me to become a part of the academic writing

community. While taking this course, I have learned so many tips and methods to improve my

writing skills. I have learned how to stay organized, how to analyze pictures, posters, and a peer

reviewed journal. All of these skills have prepared me to become a part of the academic writing

community. In this course I learned how to stay organized because of the assignments. Filling out

the essay outlines has taught me that if I have a foundation before I even start my rough draft, it

is much easier to start writing. Also, I have learned how to analyze posters and peer reviewed

journals. Learning how to analyze has prepared me because for future writing assignments, I will

know what I’m doing and have confidence in my writing.

All in all, my experience in this course is something I will hold onto for my lifetime.

Whether it be for a high school writing assignment, or in the future when I attend college and

have to eventually continue my English courses. In this class, I have learned how to analyze

physical documents, visual texts, and a peer-reviewed journal. This course has changed my

writing for the better because coming into this course I had never analyzed a document before. I

will always be grateful for the knowledge I have gained in this class, however I will never forget

the stress I went through to get here, but it was all worth it to be a better academic writer. Before

this class, I always felt hesitant to work with others, but this class has taught me to be open and

that you can learn from your peers. I would highly recommend taking this course to anyone who

wishes to become a better academic writer because this course teaches you how to manage time,

divide your workload, become more structured in your writing, teaches you to analyze different

genres, different styles of essays, working with your peers, and pushes yourself to overcome

rigorous challenges.