Reflection Paper

Since starting this class, my writing has changed in a way that wouldn’t be noticeable by most people who have read my previous work. It is not a change that is visible, no. It was a change that occurred in my thought process, after having criticism not only from an English professor, but from my fellow students and friends who share the same mindset as me. Their criticism was much more involved than what a professor can give, as they have many different pieces of writing to review, and can only be so in-depth with one paper.

As the semester progressed, each paper I was writing was written with an audience in mind; each blog post imagined with someone on the other end caring for what I have to say. I began to like writing again, like I did

In the past, I didn’t always get to hear what the audience was thinking, but with the blog, I was able to receive their complete thought on the simple, informal writing that I was providing them, and it felt great. While it did feel a bit as thought they were written in a way that wouldn’t hurt my feelings, they still helped me develop as a writer because of their different styles of writing. I was able to read their work as well, and get a sense of what type of person was writing back to me, thereby broadening the effectiveness of constructive criticism. It was no longer just a person with a collegiate degree looking down at my work with a red pen, ready to strike. It was people going through the same work as I was, and did the same things I did on the weekend, people that I could relate to. I could imagine this is what famous bloggers feel after writing a plethora of content, and receiving criticism from a wide range of people. The great thing about the groups were that they always changed and were never the same person commenting on work you just posted the week before. I was able to hear a descriptive writer’s criticism, and that from an academic or inquisitive writer. It was with that criticism that I was able to take mental notes about my writing with outside perspective. To say that it was all positive criticism would be

I took a moment to sit down and examine this paper, and see why I did so badly on it. As I pointed out before, the best of my writing is often of descriptive and opinionated material, and when I re-read my letter, I found that it was nothing descriptive and in fact very distant to my personal opinions on the subject of the letter. It was for this reason that it suffered, and I felt that it lacked any strength as a piece of writing. I know not of the combination of words that it lacked, but I can liken it to cooks referring to “love” as the extra ingredient, or artists speaking of the “emotion” channeled into the paintbrush. It felt like a hollow body of weak persuasion masked by an array of words strung together with lackluster appeal. It was the work that I felt needed the most improvement, despite having fewer words than the rest of the assignments. It was in that instant that I knew why it failed in comparison to the better portion of my material: it didn’t have the “love” and “emotion” that was fueled by description and deep-seated personal