Hanson 1 Jenny Hanson Ashley Humphries ENC 1101 21 April 2015 Final Reflection I will have to admit that coming into this class I was very nervous I was afraid that my writing was not going to be good enough to earn a good grade in this English course I would find in my earlier writing during high school that I repeated ideas over and over in a single paper This really bothered me but it was the only thing I could do when trying to meet a high word count In this class I was assigned three papers and at the end of the class I had to create an ePortfolio along with a final reflection These papers and this final ePortfolio and reflection have really helped me become a better and more confident writer Paper one really eased me into the class I was really excited because we could for the most part pick whatever topic we wanted to write about as long as it pertained to a digital aspect I decided to write about how music genres influenced certain events in my life and how different kinds of music genres influenced the ups and downs during my life so far It was really easy for me to reach the word count for this paper because I felt like I had so much to say This usually doesn t happen to me but I felt like the fact that we could pick what we wanted to write about aloud me to just keep the ideas flowing on the page I really enjoyed telling the story of mini episodes that music genres played in my life I felt really good turning in this paper because I felt like I did a really good job But when I got my paper back and Hanson 2 read Ashley s comments I knew that I needed to revise my paper again For almost the first half of the paper I was missing one of the most important parts analysis Reading over my paper again I realized that I was so focused on just telling my stories that I totally forgot in some parts of my paper to add the so what to those parts The first couple of body paragraphs are missing an explanation on how those events connected to music genre and how it changed parts of my life So I pulled up my paper on Word and started typing I tired my best to clarify how the music genre I was listening to at that time in the paper influenced my behaviors actions and thoughts I added the so what that was missing from those first two pages I wanted to make it obvious to the reader how each music genre changed me for the better or for the worse I didn t want to leave the reader looking for answers or meaning in the paper so I clarified that by adding analysis to the parts of my paper that were missing it I am now really happy with how my paper turned out It still has its great stories embedded in it but it s even better now because it now has the analysis it was lacking when I fist turned in my paper The paper now feels whole and does not leave the reader hanging or asking questions after the first few body paragraphs Paper one really eased me into the class Paper two was a little more difficult I had to write a paper on how this visuals and text from an image work together and separately to get a certain message across to the viewer This paper was harder than the first because it required much more analysis I chose to take a couple of screen shots from a video game that PETA came out with to mock the Pok mon games to use as my visual and textual analysis This paper was hard because I had to analyze Hanson 3 every detail in the two screen shots I used I also had to explain how each detail played into PETA s main message that animal cruelty is bad and that it is present in the Pok mon games When I turned this paper in I felt like I did an ok job but then Ashley said that a lot of people did bad on their papers and I was worried that I would get a bad grade on mine But when I got my paper back I was surprised to find that I received an A on my paper I was so happy that I had improved I added the right amount of analysis to my paper which I was lacking in the first paper So the only thing I needed to fix on my paper before posting it on my ePortfolio was a couple of typos and I had to add a hanging indent to my works cited page Paper one and two got me ready for the hardest paper in my opinion that I had to write this year In the third paper I had to pick an advertisement and make an anti advertisement for it and explain why I changed the original advertisement I choose to make an anti advertisement on a Victoria Secret advertisement The advertisement that Victoria Secret made only displayed super skinny models with the words a body for every body written over them In my anti advertisement I addressed that the saying a body for every body should be written on models of all shapes and sizes not just super skinny models This paper required a huge amount of analysis even more than the first two papers I found it really hard to meet the word count and I had to keep going back and adding sentences here and there to make my paper complete When I turned in this paper I didn t think I did so hot on it I thought I would get a B or C But when I got my paper back I saw that I got an A and that was huge boost to my writing confidence I realized that I was a harder Hanson 4 critic on my writing than my teachers were The ePortfolio really brought this to my attention The final assignment that I was asked to do was an ePortfolio This ePortfolio really helped me see how I grew during this class I did my worst writing on my fist paper After editing it I wrote a reflection on it This short reflection I wrote for my first paper really brought to my attention the things I needed to fix in my paper and what I did fix and add to make my paper better The ePortfolio also shows how I grew as a writer and did better on the second two papers by adding the needed amounts of analysis that I was missing in parts of my first paper I also included my journals from this past semester in my ePortfolio to showcase all of the hard work I put into this English class I have learned so much in this course I didn t realize just how much until after I wrote this final reflection I really was not proud of my writing coming into this class I was worried it was not advanced enough to get an A But this course really eased me into college level writing The papers started off pretty easy and progressively got harder I liked this because each paper expanded on how much analysis was needed for each paper so I didn t have to jump head first into a hard paper This kind of learning really helped me write great papers because I learned from my previous mistakes in paper one and applied those corrections to my last two papers My confidence in my own writing went up tremendously because I truly saw my self excel after getting my papers back graded But I truly would not have looked back and saw my growth in writing and confidence if it wasn t for this ePortfolio and final reflection The ePortfolio brought all of my hard work together Hanson 5 and I can view all of the great papers and journals I wrote this semester all in one place This final reflection is what actually boosted my confidence in my own writing Before I judged myself to hard on my own work thinking my papers that I turned in would not earn a good grade but in reality my writing was good I really grew this semester with the three papers that increased in difficulty progressively and by creating the ePortfolio and writing this final reflection