Elise Pevoar

Amy Rybak

GSW 1120

28 April 2017

Self-Reflection

            I have seen an incredible transformation in my writing from high school to college.  My freshman and sophomore year, the quality of writing was not the best.  I constantly struggled with grammar and my word choice was not stellar.  Not to mention, my teachers were very hard graders.  It wasn’t until my junior and senior year that my writing really started to improve.  However, not everything about my writing in high school was perfect.  For most of my research papers, I just put in a bunch of facts and information pertaining to the topic in the paper and never completed the real research part of it.  I didn’t enjoy writing in high school because the topics were already chosen for us.  There were a few rare occasions when we were able to select our own topics, but that did not happen until senior year. 

            I was enrolled in GSW 1110 for my first semester here at BGSU.  My view of writing changed because I was finally able to pick topics I wanted to write about.  The majority of my papers were written about the environment or other topics pertaining to that field.  I chose this topic because it’s a part of both my major and minor.  The grading aspect was different than high school because if I followed the rubric, I would receive a good grade.  I felt like the grades I received were better than I deserved because the instructor was a grad student.  Compared to high school English class, GSW 1110 was a lot easier and more fun.

            Spring semester I was enrolled in GSW 1120.  This course was very challenging to me and required a lot of work outside of class, compared to 1110.  My writing was taken to a whole other level throughout this course and I can’t believe how much progress I have made in just one semester.  However, I couldn’t have done it all on my own.  My instructor helped me out in numerous ways for each of the essays we had to write.  I would schedule appointments with her and went to a couple of her office hours.  During these meetings, she would read through my paper and give me honest feedback, which was always very useful, whether it was good or bad.  She frequently asked me difficult questions to get me thinking of all the possible viewpoints. This was something I never thought of doing in high school or GSW 1110.  I saw the greatest improvement while I was writing the final draft of the research paper.  Instead of putting facts and information in the essay, like I did in high school, I was able to synthesize my sources and write about how they related to the topic.  I also feel like I completed all the learning outcomes for this semester.  I conducted research and effectively argued my position for multiple papers, especially the research essay.  Some of the learning outcomes were more difficult to achieve than others.  The most difficult learning outcome to complete was the one that involved critical thinking because .  Overall, I have really enjoyed this course because of the instructor I had and the fact that we were able to select our own writing prompts.  I can’t wait to use the skills I learned in this class in other classes and I’m excited to continue writing.