MidTerm Reflection

Dear Connie,
Concerning my daybook entries I would give myself a B. Length isn't always important
in entrys so long as you get your point across but mine are normally a combination of length as well as
deeper level thinking. Something that shouldnt have to be put into this letter but I think is pertinent
with our class, is the fact that I fully answer not only the question but all of the questions. When we
have an assignment for homework I normally spend an hour or more on it trying to think of a good way
to phrase what I want to say in the entry to make it worth while. I also do a good job of stapling outside
sources into my daybook like the comic we did, as well as the slam poetry assignment. I have kept up
with the assignments as they were given as well as gone back and expanded some of the shorter entrys
that I thought needed work after you asked people to step up their game, even when you called me out
on being one of the better students in our class. After reviewing the books that were considered A
material, I considered my daybook to be a little off but not by much, and to be honest I do slack on
some of the entries which is why I would put my self in the above average category rather than the A
category. In my entrys I often connect specific world and personal experiences or other things we
previously learned in class to the question rather than just answering the question and moving on.
As far as participation goes I would consider myself right on the edge of an A or a B. I've been
to every single class so far and participate in class discussions fairly often. When we had to present
things I volunteered for them, as well as delivering them in a voice that wasn't monotonous or
otherwise boring. I pretty much always have something to say on a topic of discussion, such as after we
watched the book of Eli or when we review things we've read In class, I say pretty much always
because if we're discussing something I dont know about, for example last week, when we were
talking about various authors, I knew quite a few of them but not all, so in that situation I had nothing
to contribute. I listen to others and build off of what they say, creating a new idea either spun in my
own way or use their point to further back up what I was going to say. Whenever we've had to come to

class prepared to do group activities such as peer review I've taken it seriously and have always been
prepared, which is a little annoying when other people in my group either dont have their stuff or dont
take it seriously. My peer review partner did not help me improve my paper at all and it was a huge
waste of my time when I actually helped her paper by correcting her grammar as well as helping her
improve her word choice, which was rough considering the simplicity of her topic. I ended up having
two other people review my paper before I turned it in as the final which shows my dedication to what
grade I wanted to get. As for the slam poetry group project about half of my group didnt have their
poems written to share with our group so we were not able to put them into the script we printed out
which is why theirs were so short. I took that assignment seriously and I think my poem ended up being
one of the better ones due to length, effort, and the fact that I didnt read it in a normal talking voice,
which is what all of my group did but me. Therefore I think I'm on the edge of an A or B.
My literacy has come a long way with how many outside sources I've read over the course of
high school. Currently, the issue that I'm struggling with is my grammar and comma placement.
Comma placement is something I have to check over after the first draft of a paper and slows down the
process of making the paper overall better. This is something I plan to work on throughout the semester
so It eventually becomes natural, that way I can use that time to work on the structure, organization,
and depth of ideas. My writing seems to be stagnant as far as how I write, we get examples in class of
others peoples writing and new things to incorporate to our own styles but I don't understand how to do
this without sounding artificial considering my overall voice in most papers does not accommodate for
the change. I think my overall literacy is very good considering my ability to articulate well in
conversation as well as speeches, the thing I need to work on is, grammar as aforementioned and the
ability to put my thoughts and ideas into writing and make them sound the way I want them too. I also
need to work on explaining my idea's further because what seems like something that is obvious to me
may not be to the reader. My questions would be, how does one really improve their writing without
constant feedback? All of the things we've read so far tell us that the only way to get better at writing is

doing it everyday but if you practice something wrong, and constantly practice it wrong then it
becomes a bad habit, which are hard to break and can cause more problems in the future when trying to
learn new strategy to incorporate in your writing. So the question then becomes, why do we write
things everyday with no real guidance other than just getting our ideas down on paper.
For my overall grade I believe I deserve a B. I've gone back and added things to my daybook,
for the previous essay I had two other people review it after the peer review that we did in class, as well
as actively participating in class. A few things I can think of in terms of better maintaining this grade
untill the end of the course, which is what I hope to stay with until the end, is learning the MLA format
which is what I took the biggest hit on grade wise on that paper, which I think is kind of unfair
considering I looked up MLA format on the Purdue OWL web page as well as several examples and
still got a bad grade on it. I think its unfair to grade us on something we never covered and people were
obviously confused with in class due to all the questions asked. so another question would be are we
going to receive more feedback on how to correct our current bad habits in writing. Daybook entries
are completely different from essays due to the fact that one is informal and one is formal respectively
which means the writing style and format is very different. If all we practice is daybooks how are we
supposed to improve in our essay skills which is the biggest part of our grade. Also I'm not sure what
the syllabus means by the student took risks in their writing. I'm concerned that my grade won't be
what I want it to be due to technicalities in the wording and grading of certain papers and assignments.