Self-Reflective Essay

One of the biggest things that has changed for me and my writing is my attitude about writing. At the beginning of the semester I was a big shocked by the format of this class and that everything, all of our weekly writings, and even our bigger projects were posted on our blog. As a person who is not the most computer savvy, it initially was a bit frustrating to have to put everything online. I also was not sure how I felt about everyone in the class as well as anyone on the internet, reading what I wrote. A lack of confidence I think. My attitude about writing in the blog sense has become broadened. In every writing class prior to this one, all of my writing was turned into the instructor on a hard copy and he/she was the only person to read what I wrote. One thing that this style of writing has forced me to get used to is all of the things that computers can do, whether you want them to or not. For example, when I first began writing and posting on my blog at the beginning of the semester, the format of my writing looked horrible once actually posted,
"Anthropologie does a great job at applying a central rule for website design taken from
the Adobe website. “Get to know your audience and design for them.” I am a firm
believer after having worked for the company for a while that it does indeed know its
audience and makes it a priority to design for them whether it is in the
store, catalog or
the website."(The Culture of "Anthro"). As it is easy to see the flow of the lines are very messed up and the post visually, without even reading it, lacked cohesion. I have learned the quirks of the blogging website and that my pieces need to be adapted to fit the site. Merely copying and pasting from a Word document did not suffice.

Another aspect of my writing that has changed a bit since the beginning of the semester is that this class at UCD has affected my writing outside of the classroom. I think this too has a lot to do with the fact that all of my writing has been done online which at this point in my life is very applicable. So much of what I do not only for this and other classes, but life in general, is online. A specific example of how this class has effected my life and writing outside of the classroom is that for our weekly posts, especially the free writes, I was much more aware and kept my eyes and ears open constantly for something I wanted to write about. One example of this was one of the more recent free writes that I posted about group work. I began my post by saying, "I am not sure why in every group I have ever been assigned to in school there is a person that seems to not care one bit whether he/she actually participates and contributes to the group?"(Group Work). I wanted an interesting topic to write about and as the assignments from week to week in this class evolved I found myself thinking about them in other classes and how I could apply them to my other classes as well. The quotation above on group work is in reference to the group I was working in for my Business and Professional Speaking class. Another way that this class has affected my life and more importantly my writing outside of the English classroom is with all of the other things that I have to do on the internet on a daily basis. Whether it is e-mailing, facebooking or online research, our posts that we have done in this class have made me much more conscientious of my writing and other activities online.

Finally, I would like to touch a bit more on how my writing has changed during the period of the semester. Outside of all of the things that I learned because of an online style for posts, I have learned much about different styles of writing. Prior to this class I had never written a rhetorical analysis in the formal sense of the term. Initially, it was a rather difficult task as it was something very new that I had never dealt with previously. However, I am grateful for the opportunity to have written this paper as it has broadened my idea of English class a bit. I am very used to many other styles of writing that it seems like every English class prior to this one utilized. It has been good to be introduced to something new so that as a writer I have been able to grow.