Dear reader, as a student taking English 170 my perspectives on writing have greatly shifted. Before this class, I considered myself a decent writer, but one thing that always posed a challenge for me was structuring and organizing essays. Often I get too carried away writing about something that interests me and this causes me to focus less on the rhetoric and delivery of my essay. I’ll write the majority of my essay and only realize when I’m done that I’ve missed the entire point I was attempting to make. One thing I consider important that I learned in Eng 170 was how to properly do curiosity-driven research. By writing journal entries weekly and exploring topics that genuinely interested me I began to grow more fond of writing. I believe researching the journal entries helped prepare me for the research I would be doing for my cultural analysis paper. When working on the final research paper I was prepared to dive deep into the history of my object and let my curiosity motivate me to learn more. When I would find out an interesting fact about my object I would get sucked into rabbit holes just reading about it for fun. Being able to choose my object (The Orbitoclast) made me more excited to work on the essay and kept me working harder and learning more. I feel that after taking Eng 170 the way I go about the writing process has changed and I have a much better understanding of it, I realized parts that I had sometimes skipped over in the past were crucial elements to writing any essay. Before I would come up with quick thesis statements that didn’t have much depth but now I understand the importance of a well-structured thesis and how it builds the foundation and tone for the entire essay. Another thing I came to learn that was more important than I thought was a good outline and quotation sandwiches. The implication of the quotation sandwich and the outline made getting started on my essay and inserting quotes much easier and more manageable. Although I learned a lot in Eng 170 I think the area I improved in the most was researching, instead of mindlessly looking at sources I now make sure my sources all relate to each other and tie into my thesis. I have gotten better at finding good sources and have also learned how to properly cite them to give the authors credit. Overall I think my writing has drastically improved over the semester and not just my writing skills but my interest in writing and work ethic has also peaked. Although I didn’t get every assignment in on time I have improved greatly from last semester and will continue to do so. Eng 170 has sparked my curiosity and made me eager to explore my journey as a writer and see where it may take me next.

Sincerely, Jayden.