Last Blog ever!

Dear Future Student,


You are about to embark on your college writing journey. If you thought papers were over after high school, think again. Many majors require lots of writing, especially those majors that do not include math. This class however, will not be as bad as you think it will be. You will have one of the best teachers. He makes it engaging and fun and the assignments are relatively easy if you put enough effort into them. Make sure you get your rough drafts done well because peer review is so beneficial. Utilize it to the best that you can! Many times you watch videos in class and some days you just have a straight lecture. Make sure you stay on top of your blogs as they will be an important part of your grade. Most homework assignments come from your textbook and require you to have a blog and post to it. It can be tedious at times but it helps your grade. Some tips for writing the essays in this class are: Make an outline, use the outline to craft your rough draft, have your rough draft per reviewed, edit your paper based off of your peer review, and most importantly read your paper more than once so you do not make careless mistakes. The lectures can be dull, but do try to pay attention as it can help you if you are unsure about how to write a certain essay. In all honesty, this class is fairly simple and straight forward but it can be challenging if you fall behind in the work. While it may not be your top priority, a little bit of effort can go a long way!


Sincerely,
BWilson

End of the Year Blog

This course has made me re-evaluate the way I look at writing. It has been a long time since I have written many of the types of papers that we discussed in class and going over the basics is very helpful in my writing career. As we explored new topics, the foundations that we started with allowed us to improve over time and adapt them to each paper. The rhetorical analysis strategies we learned in class can be applied to almost every style of writing and type of paper we covered in class. Applying the essay models to our papers was a good challenge to our writing, with my favorite being the dinner conversation. My personal style of writing is very formal and conversational so it was a good way for me to express my style in an essay that I enjoyed writing (who says that anymore?). Having major assignments be your biggest grade in a course can be very daunting but having the grade breakdown split between rough drafts, final drafts, and other parts to the assignment made it easier to manage. Peer review was used for every paper we wrote and it was fairly helpful in my opinion. Some people feel more comfortable talking to their peers about problems they face or asking for tips, versus going to teacher at say, office hours which can be a hit or miss. The blog assignments were fairly simple but a fun homework to help reinforce the lessons being taught in class. Some of the readings were long and dry but for the most part they were helpful. A few of the blog assignments were even paragraphs that went towards papers that we wrote which force you to stay on top of your assignments. The lessons taught in class seemed rather redundant, because often times we already knew what the teacher was talking about. There could be an improvement in the material taught in the daily lessons.