Shelbey Sparrow

Robert Arnold
UWRT 1101
12/8/2015
Final Reflection
Starting college classes, I had a very hard time writing because it was just something I
did not enjoy. I was a very basic writer and wrote what it took to get a good grade and not
something I actually enjoyed. Throughout this class however, I have learned a lot about my
writing style. Much like the quote, That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something
you've understood all your life, but in a new way By Doris Lessing. I have known how to write
since a very young age but I have never written in the way that I do now, and I now understand
in a new way.
Starting with the first assignment of the class, my literacy narrative, I began to realize
that I liked writing and it actually flowed really well for me to write about myself. I had never
had the opportunity to write something like that and it was a new experience for me to look at
writing in a new way. I did however have an issue with meeting the length requirement. After
doing a peer review, one of my reviewers said I want to know more about you, how do you
think others view your love and how do you want them to view it? This immediately sparked
more ideas and helped me develop an ever more well-rounded narrative. That revision helped me
think about my narrative from a completely different direction and continued to help me with my
writing after. I then learned to look at everything I was writing from a different perspective to see
how I can form a better story. Also looking at the experiences I was writing about I learned more
about myself. Since I wrote my literacy narrative on learning how to love, which isnt exactly
something that you can learn all at once, I found myself finding new ways to apply my literacy

and become even more literate. Again, this applies to the quote by Lessing, I was rethinking
things I thought I had already learned and was learning them in a new way.
Following the literacy narrative, we did the altered book assignment. At first I was
extremely excited, I love to do all things crafts and I thought this assignment was going to be a
breeze. As a started the cover of the book and started thinking about the title I found it a lot
harder to express the emotions and scenes from my narrative in my altered book. I was beginning
to learn how to use words to express myself more than actual images which was a completely
new concept for me. I had always been extremely good at expressing myself through
photographs, paintings and other types of art work, but this was completely different. To develop
scenes and emotions with limited supplies was something I had to learn. Lessings quote again
being evident in my writing process.
After I completed the altered book I was sure I had whatever other assignments Professor
Arnold was going to give us in the bag. Then we came across the genre project. I picked
something I thought was going to be really easy for me, Movie Reviews. Movies are one of my
favorite things and I thought to myself oh hey, I can just watch movies for this, but I was really
wrong. I had to do a lot of research about what goes into writing a movie review a long with a lot
of technical things about movies that I had never considered. I had never considered the music or
the lighting or the actors previous films, and I had to watch movies I had seen a billion times
over again to begin to notice these things. Here I was again, learning new things about something
I thought I knew so much about. I also learned that I shouldve just done something that I had to
do for another class, such as a technical report. I tend to work harder instead of working smarter,
and I ended up giving myself a lot of work to do instead of killing two birds with one stone.

Finally, while writing my ethnography, I chose something that I wasnt one hundred
percent familiar with, Mechanical Engineering. Since Im a Civil Engineering major, and live in
an all engineering dorm, I thought the research would be easy, after all, all I had to do was sit in
the basement and talk to all of my friends. As far as finding people to talk to, I had plenty, but
developing questions to ask, and noticing new things I could write about about people in which I
see every day was challenging. I found myself learning so much during research and writing my
ethnography. Not only do I learn a lot about the people who I am surrounded with on a day to
day basis but I learned a lot about mechanical engineering and developed some interests. Before
writing my ethnography, I knew little about mechanical engineering as a field and I believed
quite a few of the stereotypes that I argued were not true in my ethnography. I learned quite a
few statistics and many things about the personalities and passions of mechanical engineering
students.
In conclusion Doris Lessings quote That is what learning is. You suddenly understand
something you've understood all your life, but in a new way really represents my writers
identity and how Ive developed it in this class. I learned things about myself, fellow classmates,
about some of my favorite things and I most importantly learned how to write something that
evoked emotions and wasnt just a basic paper to get a good grade. I moved away from the
ordinary fiver paragraph essays and starting writing more freely. One thing that I wish I
couldve developed was a more professional writing tone. I still feel as if I write very
colloquially, but Im confident that through my learning process in college I will develop a new
way to understand writing.