Dear Reviewer,

 

            Throughout my writing and rhetoric class in my first semester at SUNY New Paltz, I have obtained very useful skills for my future academic career.  After each of the four major assignments, I received feedback from my peers and professor that helped me grow as a writer. In one paper specifically I was told to show my feelings and emotions rather than stating them.  This ability helps your writing to sound more advanced and flow nicely. In my research proposal, a later essay due in this class, I used this newfound idea to help my paper sound advanced. The technique of showing feelings through words that don’t specifically state the emotion is a very good skill to have as it can be used in other classes to portray the essay more effectively.  I view writing differently now because I used to specifically state all of my thoughts which made my writing sound childish and now my writing sounds more advanced and fits my age. Another tool I have gained from taking this class was how to speak in a public setting. I always had a fear of speaking in front of the class as in highschool I never really had to partake in that activity.  In this class, however, each student had to present their summed up research essay in class. By participating in a presentation to around twenty students, I have gained more confidence in public speaking and learned that it is okay to be nervous but that I can get through it. This is an important skill to have in life as in most careers, speaking to people you don’t know is a great possibility especially the career of a doctor as I wish to pursue.  

             This class has helped me understand my strengths and weaknesses as well as how to turn my weaknesses into a strength in the future.  In high school, I knew I wasn’t an amazing writer based on the grades I received on essays but I never got the feedback to understand why and what I should change in the future.  This class has helped me understand myself as a writer more effectively and will help me grow more in my writing as I get older. One of my strengths in writing is the breakup of my essays into paragraphs.  My professor has told me in multiple essays that she enjoys the breakup of my essay as it flows nicely and helps the reader understand the topic more thoroughly. I never thought of separating the essay as an important aspect but as I wrote more I realized that the paragraphical makeup is key to comprehending the essay in the best way possible.  An area that needs more growth in my writing is my conclusions. I have definitely improved from the beginning of the semester, but they are still not perfect and could use more work. Most of the time, my conclusions are a direct restate of the introduction which is an incorrect, common mistake. In my second essay, my rhetorical analysis paper, I learned that conclusions are supposed to sum up the important parts of the paper but should also answer the bigger question.  The next essays I wrote, I made sure to attempt to answer the bigger question and make the paper sound complete. I still received some feedback from my professor saying to fix a couple parts of the conclusion but I have improved from the first essay. Even though writing essays is one of my weak points in writing, I believe that from the help I received in this class, I will be able to make my conclusions strong and write a powerful paper.

 

                                                                                                                       From, 

                                                                                                                       VictoriaRose Angarola