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Samantha Jeanne Murphy

Mrs. Kusinitz

Writing 104

23 January 2018

Final Reflection

Writing has never been my strong suit, so it may seem contradictory to many that I

choose to take Writing 104, especially when I could have taken a much easier English course to

graduate. However, I have never been the kind of student to cruise by and take courses for the

easy “A”. I decided It would hurt me in the long run not to take this great opportunity. I would

not only become a stronger writer, but I would also learn to write at a college level, a skill that I

was not sure I was capable of before this course. This is what I try to remember when I am

struggling to revise or finish an assignment! I find that while it is difficult to accept critical

feedback and then implement it into my writing, it is more than worth it to see how far I have

come as a writer, especially when it comes to being able to write effectively and understanding

“information literacy”.

While writing my memoir, I had a lot of difficulty developing my ideas in a way that

would effectively get the reader to understand the relationship dynamics in my high school band.

My rough draft was only 721 words, when the final was required to have at least 1000. My peers

also noticed this during my workshop, and suggested that I develop the dialog in the piece to add

to the moment and to make the relationships I had in the band more clear. So, I added dialog that

included me and my friend Dan to show how the percussion section interacts with one another,

and to add to main idea that all you need to have fun is a good group of friends. Some of the

dialog I added includes the following;

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“‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Sam you are SUCH a terrible liar, WHERE is it?’

‘I don’t know I didn’t take it’

I can’t help but giggle as Dan storms off into the myriad of drowsy and irritable

peers, which is now heading towards the entrance of the restaurant.”

Mrs. Kusinitz noticed this improvement, and commented on my final draft that she got “a real

feel for the dynamics of [the] group”, something that was not clear in my rough drafts. For

example, most of my peers did not understand what I meant when I said that I left the restaurant

with "something golden". After the revisions however it was clear that I was referring to

friendship as being "something golden".Not only was my memoir properly developed and clear

after adding more dialog, It also met the required word count of 1000 - 2000 words, being 1100

words.

I have not only improved as a writer by learning how to develop my writing, I have also

improved my use of the standard conventions of English. As I wrote my profile, I struggled to

properly use ellipses in my quotes, which Mrs. Kusinitz noted by commenting “Get rid of all of

the ellipses”. My classmates Gretchen and Rachel also noticed my editing mistakes, by

commenting things like “capitalize the I's” and “this needs quote marks”. These simple but very

apparent mistakes made reading my profile at times awkward, hindering the effectiveness of my

writing. To fix these mistakes, I not only edited my paper to reflect their suggestions, but I also

educated myself on how to properly use ellipses and when to capitalize “I’s”. That way, I will be

less likely to make these mistakes in the future, and the effectiveness of my writing will not be

hindered due to minor issues that could have easily been fixed. I also plan to continue to take
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advantage of the writing center to help me fix these convention mistakes, which is what I did for

almost all of the projects in this class.

While writing our investigative report about short school lunches, my group and I

reached a dilemma on how to address that our data was flawed.Though our school currently has

1,388 students enrolled, our survey only included 45 of those students. We as a group understood

that our readers would not only need but expect an explanation as to why they should accept our

very small data sample, since the genre of an investigative report calls for strong data. To fix

this, we decided to include the following footnote: “While this is a very small sample of the

student body in Cumberland High School, the results are endemic of the wider issue.” Adding

this footnote made our points about short lunches more effective, since our audience could now

take our data seriously.

As I’ve mentioned before, I have struggled in the past to accept critical feedback and then

implement it into my writing. This is especially true when the feedback is coming from a peer,

since it can sometimes feel personal. While writing our investigative report, my partner Alivia

commented that the following sentence was biased towards having longer lunches; “That leaves

only 9.07 minutes to eat lunch!”. At first, I hesitated to agree with her. I had written the

sentence, so I thought it was great! However, after discussing with the group I began to see how

the sentence presented bias. I also realized that having a biased sentence such as this one was

inappropriate to the rhetorical situation of an investigative report, which is supposed to only state

the facts. So, with Alivia’s help, we changed the sentence for the better.

When my group and I first decided to research lunch times and Cumberland High School,

it came to our attention that we first had to prove that students were having problems finishing

their lunches during the 20 minute period. To do this, we decided to time how long it took
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students to buy their lunches, to demonstrate how much of the lunch period is often used

standing in line. We found that on average it took students 11.33 minutes to buy lunch, giving

them 8.27 minutes to eat lunch. We also researched how much time other schools Nationwide

get to eat lunch, which we found at some schools to be 15 minutes. Once equipped with this

research, we were able to better support the claim that students are not given adequate time to eat

lunch. With our claims properly supported, our research paper became more complete and

credible.

To get this research, I first had to find the proper sources to pull data from to support my

claims. As I said before, my group found that some schools across the nation get 15 minutes to

eat lunch. This information came from an online article titled “Kids Who Are Time-Crunched At

School Lunch Toss More And Eat Less”, which is posted on the NPR website. To find this

source, I typed the keywords “short school lunches” into Google. By only searching a few key

words, I was easily able to find promising sources. This article for example was the fourth hit on

the search engine. However, I have learned from this course that before I could use this article

for my research, I first had to apply the CRAAP test. After checking that the article was current,

relevant to my research, written by authors with good credentials, was accurate, and that the

purpose was noble, I knew that I had a good source I could use in my investigative report. While

I had always checked my sources for credibility before, I did not realize that there was an easy

step by step formula to do so. Thanks to this course, I can now not only check my sources for

credibility, but I can do so in a way that is effective and efficient.

After gathering enough useful sources and applying the CRAAP test to each one, I then

had to learn how to properly cite each source in both MLA and APA format. This was my first
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time writing an annotated bibliography, and my first time citing in APA. Nonetheless, this was

one of the easiest projects for me to complete. I love formulas, and that was exactly what MLA

and APA citing was. For the annotations, I looked at examples that Mrs. Kusinitz had given us to

get an idea of what was expected of me, and what was required for the rhetorical situation. I also

looked at examples online. While looking at these examples, I noticed that for APA you are

supposed to have a cover page and “running head”, so I made sure to include those two things in

my final copy. Though an easier project, creating an annotated bibliography in both MLA and

APA proved to be just as much of a learning experience as every other project in this class. Now

when I do get to college I will be confident in my citation skills, which will allow me to focus on

the more difficult aspects of writing.

My writing overall has drastically improved since enrolling in Writing 104. However, I

still believe that I am far from done when it comes to growing as a writer. I plan to continue to

challenge myself to grow even more at the college level and beyond.