UWRT 1102-026

TO:
FROM:
DATE:

Ms. Ingram
Jim Lee
April 19, 2015
Spring 2015
RE:
Key Concepts
Practices and Habits of Mind for You to Work With
______________________________________________________________________________
Responsibility for Your Own Learning. I cannot stress enough the significance of having
responsibility for your own learning for what you see, hear, and feel that dictates who you will
meet and where you will travel. Being knowledgeably responsible means that you take your time
to invest thought and/or experience into a subject, whether you find it intriguing or not, and
converting it into working and long-term knowledge. I engage with this concept more often than
any other. In fact, in all my classes I tend to be very open with my thoughts and questions. I
believe it is my right to pursue information that I deem important, and that the teacher will not
just give me what I need, that I must search for it. For instance, this semester I am enrolled in the
University Writing Program class UWRT 1102-026, which is an introductory class designed for
freshmen. One major assignment of this course calls for you to continually update your online
blog so that you may have a personal record of your progressive growth and maturity. In Blog
Post #1, for example, I was indecisive and lazy, and had come up with 3 possible inquiry
questions that were absolutely horrendous and unrelated to my passion. I am passionate about the
complex nature of the Japanese anime culture; however, one inquiry question asks: To what
degree would the course of humanity shift had the circle never been implemented into society?
Then, in Blog Post #2, after realizing that I had also been passionate about green preservation, I
decided to narrow my inquiry question to green-related practices.
Independent Inquiry and Curiosity. This concept is intimate with Responsibility for Your Own
Learning, in that you are in charge and you ask the questions that need answering. As with the
first concept, I engage with this one nearly every day. In my University Writing Program class
UWRT 1102, for instance, I have developed an unrefined inquiry question in Blog Post #2 that
had asked: are there any other renewable resources that will yield the same versatility as wood,
which may be introduced into the market to reduce the usage of wood? This concept, however,
goes in much deeper than simply asking a question and pondering on its vastness; this concept
calls for you, the inquirer, to continually think outside the box. Why? Because, the answer to
ones question isnt always simply from point A to B; there will be times when you must
circumnavigate around other ideas to achieve your aims. Such is why I intend to promote
alternatives that are sufficiently eco-friendly: nuclear energy, bamboo, composite and torrefied
materials and so forth. The truth is, you can never actually eliminate the entirety of deforestation
and its likes; you may only control it.
The Writing Process & Revision. I am a strict upholder of proper grammar and punctuation.
Agreeably, the content and flow is equally important in a papers wellbeing, but grammar and
punctuation, I insist, play just as big of a role. I am continually developing my writing and
revision skills through rereading, re-rereading, re-re-rereading, and . . . The simple act of
scanning through your paper and searching for typos, runoffs, etc. is fairly straightforward.
Allow me to present to you two examples of the closing statement in Blog Post #4 from before

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and after its revision. Before finding the error, the closing statement was: I am confident that as
I delve further, deeper, and harder into my inquiry question I will capable of answering it to my
fullest. You may not realize it, but I had accidentally overlooked the last section of that sentence
and forgotten be immediately before capable. After revision, the closing statement became:
I am confident that as I delve further, deeper, and harder into my inquiry question I will be
capable of answering it to my fullest.
Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone. You could say that I am a traditionalist, that I despise
change and alterations to my daily rhythms. And, in fact, I do. I absolutely hate anything that I
cannot grasp upon. Well, I guess I am more of sore loser than a traditionalist. Getting Out of
Your Comfort Zones proves to be challenging and tricky for me chiefly because I am unfamiliar
with anything uninteresting. Being unfamiliar with something and attempting to dive into its
depths will prove fatal because first, you cannot get a clear grasp of what you are searching for,
and second, you simply do not have the motivation to squeeze out effort towards its cause. I
believe I may better engage this concept in the second half of this semester if and only if extra
credit is rewarded or my grades have suffered.
Multi-Modality of Print & Digital Texts. Referring back to the previous concept, I abhor
interruptions to my daily rhythms. That includes anything that I cannot wrap my head around,
e.g., writing and researching. This concept, however, is on an entirely new level; it is a
combination of the previous concept. Imagine if writing and researching was combined into a
research project that was to be culminated in a written document, visual representation,
presentation, and explanatory documentations. To better engage with this concept in the latter
half of this semester, I believe using multiple sources of various backgrounds should be able to
smoothly introduce to me the concept of variability and multi-modality. For instance, citing a
website, book, article, dissertation, and an interview, and conjoining them into a cohesive paper
sounds reasonable enough.

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