Word Count: 1005

Throughout the semester I had the opportunity to communicate and engage with people of different linguistic abilities. Some people were well used to communicating online but others were a bit more fragmented in their writing. I noticed this during some of the first discussion boards we took part in (see PB&J and Podcast and Report Reflection). This led me to understand how to communicate efficiently across all mediums by keeping a consistent tone throughout the duration of the course. By keeping a professional, concise tone, I was able to keep my message focused. This new understanding was only bolstered by communicating with my group members for the final project, the Raccoon-Be-Gone proposal. People in that group communicated differently which led to some friction. I had to use those abilities mentioned before to communicate effectively with them.

Throughout the course, I had to learn how to revise, edit and self-assess my own writing. I’m a defensive person – so instinctively I take feedback as negative criticism. Though I’ve been working on that throughout my years in school, I had to take it up a notch for this course due to the online medium. Usually, I can clear up the confusion by asking the person what they meant in person; but due to everything being online and increased waiting time to hear a response – I had to adapt. It’s a learning process but I’m well on my way to taking feedback much better. There was one assignment that asked us to watch a video and then quizzed us on how to do revisions. That lesson stuck with me because of how it was presented in that triangle chart. It was informative and put into perspective how to efficiently revise work after getting feedback. I think I’m going to remember that one for a while and maybe even reference it for future classes. I thought that it was really good advice.

While writing I realized that I had to balance my own writing goals and audience expectations. This was always a challenge for me before, because when writing it’s one’s instinct to just write what you want to write, and not what the audience wants to hear, or expects. This class gave me practice on balancing those expectations and thankfully helped me to achieve a stronger balance between the two. It’s best when you’re able to get your intentions across while complying with the rubric and what is expected of you.

It was fun to collaborate with classmates and write together, however, I do wish it was under better circumstances. Writing collaboratively is always better in person but I feel that we were able to do it adequately enough in this project. Collaborative writing was very time-efficient and effective in our case. There is always room for improvement, but I thought our end product was more than satisfactory.

I had the opportunity to engage in multimodal composing when we did the presentation for our Raccoon-Be-Gone proposal. It was an interesting experience to be able to convey our message across visually and audibly. It certainly was fun to see what my classmates looked like. The whole assignment was a great experience, from start to finish. I especially liked recording and editing together the presentation for the proposal because it was interesting to see how people put their talents together for the presentation ad see how they wanted to present the information and with what tone. I feel like I usually give good presentations so giving a presentation was a really good way to brush up on that.

Throughout the course, I had the opportunity to enhance my ability to formulate and articulate my stance through writing. Thanks to the feedback I gained and the work that I was given, my ability to convey a message across clearly was heightened. I think that articulating when writing is a very important ability and that it should be emphasized more. Some of the students I had the privilege of giving feedback to needed some help on that part, but otherwise, I thought they did really well. Articulating through writing is the most important thing in writing. Otherwise, your writing is just a lump of meaningless letters.

Through the assignments given in the class, I had the privilege to use multiple new resources while conducting research to write the best paper I could. I was exposed to new YouTubers, websites, and forums that I will take note of next time I need to write. I always avoided using Wikipedia and other commonly used sources since they might not be the most accurate. But I feel that in this class I was able to find the appropriate ones to get the best research data I could. This is especially important since going to libraries and physically checking out books for reference is not a good idea in this pandemic and digital world of ours.

Thanks to this course, I was able to strengthen my source using practices but doing multiple projects which had me looking up things for research. For example, the technical description had me exposed to a whole new side of skateboarding that I didn’t even know existed thanks to researching how to build my own skateboard. It turned out that there was a lot more depth to how a skateboard works rather than just push and zoom. Another example of this would be the group project that I did in group 3, we used multiple sources and did the research for days to find and construct our idea and proposal for the Raccoon-Be-Gone secure trash can.

To sum it up, I learned many things in this class. I strengthened as a reader and writer. I learned to take criticism much better and overall grew as a person. I learned new things in this course that I hope to take with me to other classes and apply. Especially the revision triangle, I really like that one. I’m always learning new things, so it was a great educational experience for me to learn how to grow academically and do these things.