Reflective Cover Letter

To Whom It May Concern,

In the course, Writing and Rhetoric my writing has grown a lot from the day I first started college. When I first started, my writing was not organized. I experience a lot of mind-block while writing or have the notion to over-write and my ideas are too much and make the paper unorganized.  I learned how to properly do academic research and how to make my ideas more organized and flow my ideas better. Also, I learned how to give constructive feedback and how to work effectively in a group. I used this same skill in my job because my job is to help customers with their insurance issues and give them feedback. I also have to work together with my coworkers in an effective manner to help the flow of the office run smoother.

Additionally, This course also made me more curious about the music industry which I never thought I would be because I just listen to music and never thought to myself what might the artists go through on a day-to-day basis. I learned how artists go through an excessive amount of sexism in the industry. All I listen to is female artists mostly, so I didn’t see how there is a dramatic decrease in women composers in the industry. This lesson took my point of view and made it greater and let me see that there is a whole outside of what I listen to. I wish I would’ve learned more in class about what men think about sexism in the music industry and their standpoint on that. Overall, the class made me more aware of my surroundings but also made me more curious.

My primary takeaways from this class are something I learned from one of the performers that we interviewed, he reminded us not everything in life is about making money and we shouldn’t choose our major based on what makes us the most money which is important to hear because it’s a reminder to follow your heart when picking a major. I found this helpful being that when he told us this I was an undecided major and it did help me navigate which majors I find the most appealing to me. My other takeaway from this class is that when I am experiencing writer’s block in any paper, I should still keep on writing down all of my ideas so that I won’t get sidetracked. When writing down all of my ideas, I could then take the ideas I love the most and turn it into a paper and make it more organized. I found that when I did this, the ideas for my paper came to be much easier than just stopping and thinking about what I want to write about. This is an important skill for any major and in life because, in every job, there is some type of writing and in every major, you have to write to do your labs, papers, presentation, etc. These two takeaways were the most important to me and the ones I would remember beyond the classroom.

I now consider my research process including my in-text citation style to be one of my strengths. I think I did well citing my texts within the essay. I feel like it helped a lot to do an annotated bibliography first and then incorporate those ideas into the essay instead of writing the essay first and then doing the works cited page. On the other hand, I think I still need room for perfecting my MLA format. I tend to not know how to cite YouTube videos or Netflix shows which is something I need to perfect for when I am doing extensive research and used a video to defend my argument or thesis. This goes hand in hand with my other main course assignment that I feel I was the most successful at, critical reading and thinking. These skills that I am now very successful at helped me a lot with my major project. Learning how to pick the most important information from a long book or video and not overflow my paper with quotes was essential to creating good assignments. This will also help me with my major biology and psychology because of the extensive amount of research I would have to do in these subjects. I also suppose I will be doing a lot of research papers as well. Overall, I learned many new things in this course and it expanded my knowledge and my progress will benefit me in the future and the present.

All the best,

Amanda Mireles