December 11^th, 2020

Dear fellow classmates,

At the beginning of this course, we were asked to write a basic introduction of ourselves, our experience with writing, and what we believe to be the qualities of good writing. As I was writing my introduction, I couldn’t help but overburden myself with endless doubts about my writing capabilities. Along with my already low confidence, my high school years didn’t help with my insecurities either. When I was in high school, I was forced to take Greek mythology and philosophy as an English course and in those classes, writing was not important. Because of this, I was never judged on my writing abilities or taught how to grow from them. Apart from those insecurities, I was not confident about my thoughts. When I found out that our class would mainly be discussing social issues, I thought to myself, “What if everything I said was just wrong or was different from the class’s point of view?” I was also the type of person to be a bit unaware of recent activities of some social issues, therefore there were constant doubts about my ability to do well in this class.

Entering freshman composition, I had high hopes of learning more about current social issues and improving my writing through the guidance of you guys and our professor. In our first essay, we were assigned the Source-Based Essay. This type of essay I was very familiar with because when I took AP English Composition, a rhetorical analysis was a very important essay to master in. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very good at it and as a result, I hated rhetorical analysis. When I submitted my first draft, there was no surprise that I made numerous errors. Handling 4 different sources to build the idea that historical US laws and policies had contributed to the racial wealth gap was difficult. To find the exigence, audience, purpose, genre, and stance of the author for each source were also meticulous. Heavily focusing on the evidence, I ended up providing less analysis about the evidence and therefore, it lacked my thoughts. I used my evidence to explain my essay rather than using my own words to explain and use my evidence. I was also too focused on the organization of the essay rather than ensuring that there was a flow (transition) between each paragraph. Furthermore, in the Inquiry-Based Research essay, I had the same issue of not elaborating on my evidence. From doing these essays, I’ve come to realize that I put more emphasis on the organization rather than the quality of my essay. This was a problem that needed to be fixed. When revising my essay, I cut down on the length of the evidence used and replaced it with my own elaborations, and I explained how each idea connected to each other and how it relates back to my social issue research question.

When approaching my 3^rd essay, the Composition in Two Genre essay, I kept in my mind how much I had to elaborate on my sources. This time it was much easier because I decided to do a visual genre, therefore what I drew for my poster and political cartoon would reflect what I wanted to express. Explaining what each of the visual genres represented and the meaning behind each symbol allowed me to connect it to the purpose of this essay. When I submitted the first draft, there weren’t any problems in elaboration. The only problem was to add a few details to my drawing. This essay marked the last essay for our Freshman Composition class and it was with improvement on my weaknesses.

Throughout this semester, I was able to grow in my writing skills through the constructive and thoughtful critique from Professor Harris and from you. I was able to pinpoint my weaknesses and how I should strengthen them through your guidance. Before this semester began, I expected backlash or criticism from you. Instead, I’ve received nothing but support. I was not once criticized on my thoughts about each social issue and this definitely brought up my confidence. My belief on what would be important when it comes to writing has also shifted. At first, I believed that when it comes to writing, organization, no grammatical errors, and good engagement with the audience was significant. Now that I’m typing this final reflection, I’ve come to realize that there are other factors more significant than the ones I initially believed. I’ve realized rather than keeping the organization in mind, transition/flow being information and paragraphs were more important because it’s what allows the readers to see the connection and relationship between the ideas and points, I’m sending across. In addition to good flow, the analysis and explanation of each evidence are just as important. The analysis represents the author’s thoughts and it also helps information from each evidence to connect to one another. I cannot have my essay be a collection of evidence explaining things that I want to say because it wouldn’t be my essay anymore. By using the theory of writing I’ve created, it allows my intended audience to understand the problem of the social issue and what change needs to be done. The knowledge from the author to the reader can be spread.

This theory of writing I’ve made can be applied to any situation, regardless of whether we’re inside a classroom or a workplace. Inside a classroom, my theory of writing can be utilized to get good grades in our assignments, and let’s be honest here, that’s our main goal. In the working field, as a student entering the world of computer science, writing is still important. When writing proposal papers about certain software development, it is important to get your ideas across to important people, whether it is your boss or an investor, who may not understand what certain coding terms mean. I would use the software as evidence and I would have to explain each of the ‘evidence’ purpose and how each function of the software connects to one another. This can help me get hired.

I end this email by saying that everyone’s different. There’s no right way of writing. I just hope that my theory of writing would shed some light when you’re developing your own theory. Overall, I wouldn’t have developed this theory all on my own and I wouldn’t have improved in my writing if it wasn’t for you guys. As we go through our college years together, we will encounter more writings. I hope to learn from you and see how my theory of writing would change.

Sincerely,

Alice Liu