This semester was very impactful for me as a writer, there were many diverse assignments with an emphasis on reflection and collaborative criticism. This course had a large emphasis on developing the rhetoric of one’s own writing process, and that couldn’t have been demonstrated better than with the first introduction assignments provided. I believe that assimilating a handful of different writing styles and combining them in the form of the early group projects was the best way to physically display where and how effective my writing can be digested and interpreted in a collaborative format. While it was difficult in the beginning of the course to establish a confidence between timid classmates who did not know much about each other, I believe it was necessary for me as I could understand the many different composing elements of my group, and attribute each of our strengths to dilute the context of the beginning assignments. Where my group fell at a disadvantage was when we were led to present our information in a time constraint, where many of us were very skilled at analysis, our group buckled when portraying the most relevant information as anxiety held and lack of summarization hurt the confidence in our understanding.

After this the work did become a little more interpersonal, as individual research was to be conducted for our research topic for the literature review and research paper. It was still advised that our work would be subject to peer reviewing, this eased me because my analysis could be challenged and I could see firsthand how well collaborators can comprehend my synthetization. What was most helpful was the presence of the vast library database system we were pushed to utilize for these crucial assignments, I was very pleased with the databases I used like Sage Journals and JSTOR and they were extremely reliable sourcing and allowed me more time to extract my sources. My enhanced confidence allowed me to better pick out the information that suited my needs for my research.

Early on with the literature and research papers, I had already convinced myself of the field of science I wanted to further summarize that would bring more attention to the topic, and already having an expectation to undergo iterations, also allowed me to more easily produce my ideas and compose a stance that can be judged upon and evaluated for sensibility and clarity. Although I still strived for perfection mostly right out the gate of my first iterations of work, I did keep in mind that if my readers felt that I was trying to fit too much information in one area or have little to none in another, I could trust my reviewer to single these discrepancies out since the class was already focused on re-development of ideas and how to formulate concrete and clear arguments for the masses to absorb. I was very harsh on how I needed to get the point across within the translation of my papers, and this could’ve cost some of my ability to integrate it as a system operating as a whole, but thankfully from the feedback, I could grace where my analysis fell short from.

Overall, I realized where I could instead take one step back from ‘final’ production and evaluate the confounding parts by the time of the creation of my research paper, I could critically read my work almost as an outsider and as if I didn’t write the piece myself and compare it to the feedback I had received, this allowed for me to better structure my synthesis and create the narrative I sought for earlier into the semester, which I believe was the whole purpose of this course. There are an exuberant amount of sources and journals we come come across on a daily basis, and it is our jobs as readers and writers to extract pieces of text and evaluate the methodology of the writer’s supposed writing process. Not just for pieces of writing we consume from others, but our own as well, since we can be very biased and non-critical of our own work. Going forward I now understand the importance of allowing extra evaluation at every stage of the writing process can be beneficial towards producing quality writing. My original goal for this course was to ‘better’ understand how scientific sources can be examined and made available for those to understand, and that has now changed as I realize that I were always capable of scalping at complex writings and can break them down, which also has propelled me to better summarize my own work to avoid jargon. I feel as if I have walked out with more skills than I had entered with, and for that I am grateful.