Cameron Safrit

Professor Sindelar

English 2116

8 May 8, 2018

Reflection Essay

The Spring 2018 semester has finally come to a close. This is my first completed year

here at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I feel very grateful to have been able to

take the classes I did and learn all the valuable lessons from each of my professors and fellow

peers. Coming into the spring semester I knew I would be taking an English course. I was

terrified and nervous before the semester started. One of my biggest weakness in academia is

writing and English classes bring out my weaknesses every single day I attend the class. Ever

since elementary I have hated English classes because of my lack of skills in writing and public

speaking. Knowing this is a college course, I was well aware there would be plenty of papers to

write and possibly presentations to give. After all the class is called Technical Writing.

Throughout this semester I felt there was a huge jump in my writing skills. I feel that I

learned to write more technically and professionally about a topic that isn’t really my bread and

butter. At the beginning of the semester I had no idea how to write technically and give

professional report about real world problems. With the help of this class I feel I now have a

good grasp on how to approach these types of documents with professionalism and clarity.

Biggest thing I take away from this class is how to format my documents with the correct

headings and font style. Some areas I feel I still could improve would be my grammar and

getting my point across without too much wordiness. I feel the more I write and using the

feedback I receive that those things will steadily improve.

 Beginning of the course I discussed that my goals for this 2018 spring semester were to

improve my writing skill, such as grammar and punctuation, and to learn how to write other

documents besides essays. I feel that I have met those goals because of this class and the

assignments that were given throughout the semester. I think I could still continue to work on my

grammar, like where to place commas or semi colons, however I do believe I improved. I also

learned how to write these different kinds of technical documents which each presented its on

unique set of challenges in trying to write. I really enjoyed learning how to write differently and

seeing the finally finished product.

The assignment I am most proud of would be the usability and instructions report.

I had the most fun with that assignment, interacting with my peers and getting their feedback on

my work. It was a real challenge to find a website that met the criteria for the assignment and

making sure my instructions were clear enough for users to understand and complete the task

that was being asked of them. One assignment I would add would definitely be the email

assignment. I know that it was originally supposed to be in the curriculum for the semester and

we just ran out of time, but that was an assignment I was actually looking forward to. I obviously

know how to write an email, but I have never been taught how to write a email correctly and

professionally and I would have loved to learn about and received feedback on that assignment.

Overall, I feel it was very good semester in this English class. I enjoyed the assignments

and learned a lot more from this course then most of my previous English courses combined. I

still am not a fan of English however but I feel I have more tools in my tool box to write papers

and be successful in future courses.