A Retrospective

Throughout this semester, I was able to continue to improve my writing along with researching topics that I was genuinely interested in. For each of the four essays that I wrote, I chose topics that I either connected with or that I genuinely wanted to learn more about, which made the writing process much easier and more fun.

I learned a lot about the topics that my essays focused on, but I learned even more about the writing process and how to better my own process and writing. This course encouraged a lot of collaborative work, and while it was something that I was not entirely comfortable with at first, it turned out to be one of the most helpful ways for me to receive feedback and improve my essays. I feel that my classmates gave really great feedback and asked great questions that made me think more deeply about what I was writing, which led to stronger analysis and an overall stronger essay.

In terms of the blog, this was not my first time blogging for a class. However, I did enjoy this experience a lot more. It was very helpful to be able to post my ideas and gain feedback in a more informal manner in order to facilitate the writing process when it was time to start writing my essay. The blogging prompts were by far the most helpful in helping me start the writing process as they gave me specific things to think about when writing my essay. While they were not the only thing that I kept in mind while writing, they provided some guidance throughout the writing process.

For future writing students, I would suggest keeping up with the blog timeline since the blogs are usually posted before the first draft is due. I say this because the questions allow you to start researching and writing little by little. You won’t have a full essay just by keeping up with the blogs, but they give you a better sense of where you want your essay to go and what sources you should be looking for.

I enjoyed reading my group’s blog posts and was grateful for the feedback I received on my posts, so I think this may be something I continue for other classes that have writing components. This blogging experience offered an opportunity for early research and extra feedback that was very helpful during the writing process.

Thank you so much for reading, and until next time!