Writing is an exploration

The first time I cleaned out my closet was an absolute disaster. I spent hours
shoveling through piles of clothes, trying on old costumes, and was eventually left
with a closet full of wrinkly and unorganized clothes. Every time my closet would
seem messy, I would go through the process again, yet the following time I would be
sure to switch my process in hopes of cleaning in a more efficient manner. Ten years
later, I have yet to perfect my closet-cleaning skills, but have it down to a science that
has taken continuous trial and error- just as my career as a writer has. It is not often
that we are given the opportunity to critically analyze just how much a course about
writing has taught ourselves. Instead of considering who I am as a writer, I am often
mistaken and accidentally analyze myself as what I am as a writer. In past writing
courses, I was only able to walk away from the class with strictly one memory: the list
of assignments completed. However, being apart of UWRT 1103 has been the turning
point that has shown me just how much a class has to offer- behind the physical work.
UWRT 1103 has not only given me the opportunity to construct three major pieces of
literature in which I am extremely proud of, but has made me realize the importance of
understanding what you want and what you get from writing. This semester has
demonstrated to me that in order to construct a product, one must undergo a process of
goals, strengths, and weaknesses. After taking this course, I now understand that if a
person wishes to grow as a writer, it is essential that they analyze the mechanics of the
concepts that make up their writing.
The goals I had when entering this course were quite different from what I
have had in past writing intensive courses such as Global Connections, Women and

Gender Studies, Special Education, etc. A general trend that I have when entering a
new course is to set a goal of being able to understand the class material, retain the
information taught, and in turn make an A in the course. However, at the beginning of
second semester, I decided I wanted to change this close-minded and somewhat
uneducated mindset of mine. When considering what my goals were in January, I
knew that instead of just making good grades on my UWRT 1103 assignments, I
wanted to train myself to write with a purpose, rather than simply for an assignment or
desired grade. It was hard to have a plan of how I would achieve this goal due to being
unsure of what assignments laid on the road ahead of me, but I knew that a freshman
writing course would be a great starting point. Along with the overall goal of writing
with a purpose, I entered this course with hopes of spending more time on my work
than what I was generally used to. Writing is not my area of expertise, and because of
that I often feel unmotivated to complete assignments because of the lengthy process it
usually takes me. However, I chose to make another goal of developing new strategies
for my writing processes. In previous high school writing courses, I had followed a
similar method of writing (brainstorming, outline creation, rough draft, final draft) that
sometimes did not seem to push me to be the best writer. So, I set a goal of
strategically undergoing new and different techniques of writing- creating a new path
to a final draft- with the hopes of finding new strategies that help me produce the best
literature possible.
Being able to analyze my personal strengths demonstrated throughout this
course is tricky because I am only able to view my writing from my own perspective.
Instead of considering different individual strengths Ive displayed this semester, I am

overall very proud of how I handled the different workload assigned in this class. In
past writing courses, my assignments were similar to the Narrative on Learning, in
the way that there was a direct prompt, with exact directions such as amplifying the
use of specific characters, action, setting, dialogue, and interaction. However, as our
assignments digressed, I noticed that there was much less presented to us beforehand
in the assignment description and more expected of us as writers to construct. It
seemed challenging and stressful at first, but I was proud that what I was able to create
as a writer aligned with what was expected from you as my professor. For example,
one of the listed course practices was to develop practices for connecting previous
knowledge and experiences to new situations. I did not understand what was meant
by this goal in January, but it now makes sense that this refers to using our narrative
on learning to write our Sponsors of Literacy: My Version piece. Because my first
narrative met all requirements, I felt incredibly strong and prepared when constructing
my own version of Deborah Brandts essay.
As I have in almost every writing course Ive taken, I experienced some
challenges this semester- both internal and external- throughout the semester that were
not easily conquered. As explained in the collection tab of my portfolio, it was
common for me to have issues with the external content of my literature. The earliest
examples of this was with sentence structure and dialogue quality in my Narrative on
Learning. I struggled with this issue even at the end of the semester with my problembased project, I faced issues such as having a weak introduction, irrelevant images,
and statistics that could have been described in a better manner. This was a reoccurring
problem for me during the semester and will most likely continue in my writing

career, and I will continue to strive to better my skills in these areas, but there were
bigger, more internal issues in which I faced this semester within my writing. If I
could relive the past, I wish I would have spent more time on the drafting stages of my
writing. While I felt confident with the final product of every piece I published this
semester, I could have created even better content had I spent more time planning the
early stages such as brainstorming, mind-maps, story-boards, and zero drafts. I
constantly faced the issue of having vague in-class notes about the assignment and Ill
admit, I could have put more effort in to most of the pre-project homework
assignments. Unfortunately, its small, tedious mistakes like these that I feel have
prevented me from creating the best work to my ability.
I began the semester by setting a handful of goals for myself and am able to
understand which ones I have reached by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses I
have displayed in this class. I now ask myself the question: What are my new goals?
As a Business major, I do not expect to have as many writing courses as say an
English major would, however I must still strive to improve my writing skills with
each and every assignment. Under the collections tab in my portfolio, my synopsis
about my Narrative on Learning explains how much I enjoyed having the opportunity
to write with a new style. Throughout my future writing courses and career postgraduation, I am going to work towards achieving my new goal of writing with the use
of different genres in hopes of learning new forms of expression and format. I have
great interest in so many other forms of literature- such as publishing articles, writing
short stories, or even working with visual literacy. My new goal is to branch out
beyond what Im accustomed to in hopes of discovering even more strengths and

weaknesses. The process of writing is simply the cleaning of a closet- it happens over,
and over, and over again. There is no final end to it.
There are a thousand ways to clean a closet. You can begin by vacuuming the
floor, but then realize that its pointless to do that step first because of the debris that
hit the ground throughout the rest of the cleaning process. So- the next time you clean
your closet, you switch up your method to perfect your previous mistakes. Likewise,
there are a thousand ways to go about your writing. At the beginning of the semester, I
did not realize how much of an impact this course would have on my writing career. I
walked into the classroom with a variety of goals, ranging from training myself to
write with a purpose (rather than for an assignment or desired grade), to developing
new strategies for my writing processes. I was able to reach these goals by considering
what strategies when planning my literature would be the most practical and beneficial
to my writing, patiently understanding the reasons behind my writing, and creating
strong content that would help connect my literature to future assignments. This
semester has shown me that while I constantly catch myself facing obstacles as I
construct my literature, it is just the process that I must undergo to create a final
product full of strengths.