Wang 1

Alicia Wang
Professor Lynda Haas
Writing 39B
8 June 2014
The Final Reflection Essay
When I first signed up for classes, I was hesitant on taking a writing course. I knew it was
unavoidable, but I was not a skilled communicator. I did not write eloquent essays, or spoke with
confidence. I did not want to enroll in a class where my weaknesses would be shown and evaluated.
However, in this course, I have learned how to improve my communication skills with practice and guided
learning. I have learned how to read critically and site sources. I learned how to create a PowerPoint and
capture an audiences attention. I learned the importance of peer review, and teamwork. Lastly, I have
learned the importance of reflection and learning from my mistakes and my strengths. These skills did not
come from just memorization. I studied these techniques from practicing them on a weekly basis. I
practiced how to read and interpret scholarly text, how to work as a team to accomplish group projects,
how to edit and revise essays, how to analyze text in all forms, and how to write an academic essay All of
these new skills are abilities that I will practice in my future courses.
In the beginning of the course everyone was asked to deliver a short introduction in front of the
class. This task was important because it not only introduces the skill of public speaking but also the
decision making process of choosing fellow teammates in a group. The goal is to have someone remember
you and want you to be in his or her group. I took a new approach on my introduction and instead of just
writing about the present moment and who I am, I also wrote down what I wanted to be. I practiced the
habit of mind, openness, and did not realize it until now. I based part of my biography on whom I wanted to
become because my goals and what I hope to achieve are an indication of my strengths and weaknesses. I
wrote an introduction, practiced and practiced in front of my friends until even they could deliver my
speech. Prepared and ready, I stood in front of the class, and forgot my entire speech. I rushed through the
bits and pieces that I did remembered and rushed back to my seat. I knew public speaking is something I
needed to practice but after my introduction, I knew I really needed to improve. I was one of the last picked
for group members and no one seemed to remember my name.
Wang 2
The classs first blog assignment was to write about our speech and a habit of mind. At the time I
chose engagement, the habit of putting in time and effort into learning. However, I also was persistent in
my learning. I have slowly but surely developed my public speaking skills and level upped my ability to
stand in front of an audience. Through practice and feedback from my classmates, I have used every
presentation opportunity to speak and smooth out the bumps in my speeches. I continued to learn more and
more about how I can improve and now I enjoy speaking in public. I was determined to work on my public
speaking skills, and recently I spoke with confidence at the RIP Seminar in front of about thirty students
and two professors.
I practice my communication skills but I also practiced my team building skills. During week two,
I wrote about responsibility. My team was made up of three other intelligent students and we named
ourselves after one of our teammates. The goal for our team was to make a presentation about medicine and
technology during the Victorian Era. I understand the meaning of responsibility but when there are three
others counting on me to finish a specific part of the project, responsibility is taken onto a whole new level.
Responsibility is not just finishing work on time but it is realizing when I had made a mistake that brought
up or down the overall quality of the work. Responsibility is standing up for my own work and
understanding when an error has occurred and how to fix the mistake instead of blaming an outside force.
This habit of mind sounds very negative but it also means to me that trusting teammates is important and
when something does go well, we can all say we played a part in the quality of the project. My teammates
and I separated the work by figuring out an equal set of tasks that needed to be completed. We each chose
the tasks we were most interested in and created a shared google doc. With the shared google doc, we set a
due date and trusted everyone to work and finish by the due date. Just like the first initial presentation I
created with my smaller group of four, I created another presentation at the RIP Seminar. This time my
group was made up of seven students, six intelligent students and I worked on a power point with
information on everything we have learned this past quarter. The presentation was not an easy task to
accomplish especially with numerous conflicting schedules. In the seminar, I used teamwork skills and the
habit of mind, flexibility, openness, and responsibility to accomplish the goal of a professional
presentation.
Wang 3
From the RIP Seminar, I learned flexibility. It is not easy to get seven people all in the same room
at the same time, or understanding everyones workload to set a doable due date to finish the task. I had to
be flexible with my way of thinking and knowing that because of different due dates, everyone had to finish
or work on the project during their own time. I knew I needed to change my expectations and demands
based on everyones personal need. Despite everyones heavy workload, we all finished within the time
period by assigning specific jobs for everyone. We had two teams, one team presented and another team
created slides and researched information. I was the team leader and was on both the research team and the
presentation team. I wanted to be on both teams because I was curious about the Watson and Sherlock
convention but I already knew about the background of the Victorian Era. Using the habit of mind
curiosity, I worked with Vanessa and Haeni to explore the convention and become an expert on the topic. I
spoke about the Watson and Sherlock conventions and I researched and created the slides about the cultural
context of the Victorian Era. As a whole, the presentation went well. We all looked and felt professional,
ready, and prepared. I am proud of what I presented. I picked up a few tips from the other class. I learned
the importance of testing technology if I am teaching in a new environment and how asking questions will
keep the audience engaged. The other class used the technique of asking questions and I will use this
technique in the future. I tried to keep in mind openness during the preparation of the seminar and during
the seminar. I changed and altered the presentation based on the new techniques and ways of thinking my
teammates, classmates, and professor. For example, a classmate suggested to take out a convention and
focus on the details instead of using broad ways of thinking for every and a teammate suggested we
coordinate our slides with the video created by Andy to make his video easier to understand.
The RIP Seminar was a reflection of everything my classmates and I have learned. Most of the
information we absorbed was from texts, via movies, television, short stories, and scholarly articles. After
reading The Sign of the Four by Sir Author Conan Doyle, I read the six scholarly texts in order to write the
Literary Review Essay. This essay contained the voices of different scholars and their opinions on why
Sherlock Holmes was popular during the 19
th
century I learned to be engaged in what I was learning
because Dr. Haas emphasized how I would use my critical reading skills to write and read research journal
articles. I reread the articles just to gain the best grasp on the concepts and highlighted parts that I could ask
questions about or tie it into something I had learned before. In the end, Dr. Haas, had to explain all the
Wang 4
texts to the class. I knew I did not have the skills yet to fully understand the text because reading critically
is a technique that needs to be practiced. I reflected and knew that despite not having the amount of practice
and experience Dr. Haas had, I still showed areas of improvement. Dr. Haas is very good at reading
critically but I think it is also important to listen to my peers too. I was interested in the conventions and
scholars and because of my curiosity, I paid attention to my peers and what information they had to offer.
Often enough, my peers would suggest an idea that I had not thought of and every new idea continued to
feed my curiosity to learn more and ask questions to the next classmate.
After writing my essay, my group members and I did a peer review session where I was able to get
a fresh set of eyes on my work. I realized the strength in peer review because I gained so many new ideas
from their knowledge and advice, but I was also given writing tips on how I could focus my writing and
add more details instead of creating general concepts in my essays. Peer Review is important because it
allowed me to practice the habit of mind openness, creativity and responsibility. Openness and creativity
allowed me to keep a good mindset to learn from my teammates. Responsibility forced me to give good
feedback too since if I did not give good feedback then I would do a dishonor on another person. Keeping
responsibility in mind, I read critically and made sure that my advice would help the person. For the second
essay I looked critically at a TV series based on Sherlock Holmes. My classmates and I were given time to
peer review each others work and I practiced the habit of mind openness again to improve my essay based
on the peer review. Another person reading into my essay will have a fresh set of eyes and I their advice
really helped. Despite having all the peer review and feedback from Dr. Haas, I decided to reviews my
rhetorical analysis essay.
In the end, I decided to revise my rhetorical analysis essay because it is my weaker essay. This
essay contains an interesting topic with a lot of detailed observation but does not have a clear objective or
overall statement. My greatest strength will be the observations made and written about in the draft but the
greatest weakness will be explaining what the observations mean and clarifying the material. While I will
revise my second essay, I will also revise a paragraph on my Literature Review essay. This paragraph is the
wordiest of all my paragraphs and contains a lot of information that can be shortened and made more
concise. After reading my drafts multiple times, it is hard to work on the habit of mind, persistence. I am
working on new ways to approach my topic in order to keep my enthusiasm for the material. I am not
Wang 5
skilled at writing concise information so I hope this paragraph allows me to practice shortening my writing
and focusing on the main points and the necessary details. The strength in this paragraph will be the amount
of information but the weakness will be the length of the paragraph.
Throughout the quarter, I have learned how to read critically but also how to adapt to new forms
of learning and practicing these new techniques. I will use these skills for not only courses in Psychology
but any course that is academically challenging or requires teamwork. I learned it is important to constantly
practice but also that I have so much room for growth and to continue learning. The habit of mind,
metacognition, can be practiced throughout my life and will help me see where I can better myself and
enhance my ability. I need to practice reading and writing critically, but be open to new ways of learning. I
need to practice team building and leadership skills so I can achieve my goals with the help of others.