In the first project, I wasn’t too sure of what I was supposed to be writing about. I felt like I was writing blindly, with not a single clue of how to approach our first big assignment in this class. With each draft, I feel like I started to slowly get an idea of what I should be focusing on and in which direction to take my paper. My first draft of project 1 was very disorganized and re-reading it now makes me cringe a little because it just seems like it leads nowhere. The conference with Mat and the peer reviews really helped me to find my direction.

            In the second project, I had a better idea of what I was supposed to write about and focus but I still felt a little confused with some things. It took a while for me to really grasp the idea of ‘genres,’ ‘subgenres,’ and ‘texts,’ and I feel like that’s very evident in my first drafts and in the paper I submitted before the revision. The thing I was most unclear about was how those terms applied to my community. Because I was unclear on what was meant by ‘genres,’ ‘subgenres,’ and ‘texts,’ much of my paper was very disorganized and seemed like a bunch of information and words jumbled together just to reach the word count, but I was not aware of how much of a mess it was when I turned in my “final draft.”

            After I received my grade for Project 2 and saw Mat’s notes on my project 2 paper something in me clicked when I was re-reading my paper with his notes and I saw what a mess my paper was and why it seemed so confusing to the reader. Revising my second paper really helped me because now I have a better sense of genre, subgenre, and texts. It also helped me with organization.

I feel like a big issue I have when it comes to writing is organization of my paragraphs. It’s like “Shitty First Drafts,” I write the first thing that comes to my mind, but my problem is that I don’t go back and reorganize and touch up all the random ideas that I just spewed out on the paper, I sort of just continue to add, hoping that I reach the word limit. Revising my second paper really helped me with that; I need to be more organized with my paragraphs otherwise it’ll confuse the reader and make the message or point that I’m trying to get across unclear.

Project 3 was definitely my favorite one of the three. It allowed us to really think outside of the box and get creative with different genres for our project 2 communities. But, I think the reason why it was my favorite of the three was because I wasn’t writing a paper. This project allowed me to explore genres and texts like the other two projects, but it allowed me to do it in a fun and interesting way.

I really enjoyed this class, even though there were times that I wanted to pull my hair out when writing my papers. However, even though the papers caused me stress, I feel like they really helped me improve my writing, especially when it comes to organization and clearly stating my ideas. I feel like the readings also helped me immensely in improving my writing. It gave me so many helpful tips and answered many of the questions that I had.