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Alexa Lomeli-Reynoso
Writing 2
Evan Andersson
June 4th, 2023
Adventuring Into Writing 2

Although I didn’t come into Writing 2 with much expectations I do have to say that a lot

was learned. I was by no means a great writer but I liked to believe I was quite close to it. This

course pushed me to write in a way that I haven’t done before. For instance, prior to this quarter I

wasn’t familiar with genre to genre translations. I was pushed to not only write one but two

translations. They seemed to be out of my comfort zone but safe to say that the project builders

were a great help, they were able to give me an idea of what the final project would look like as

well as helped me rough draft my work. The readings were of great help as well but I do have to

say that most of the subjects covered within them were ones that I have reviewed in previous

courses. As writing 2 progressed I slowly began to feel more comfortable with the work assigned

as the activities in class were very helpful. There was an occasion where we played plagiarism

jeopardy as teams and it furthered our understanding on the topic. Some of the questions were

very straightforward while others weren’t. For example, there were some questions which

consisted of different punishments and fees that can result from plagiarizing others' work. I was

quite unfamiliar with the fees therefore I was able to learn a little bit more about plagiarism as a

whole. In this course I was able to familiarize myself with the development of websites. Our

reading Writer/Designer stated, “Even if we’re working with a text that is all words, every piece

of it should be deliberately placed” (Arola, et al 2014). Despite the fact that I was also somewhat

familiar with the style tips presented in the slides it was a nice refresher to see the tips during our

writing periods. There was great help in creating proper sentences which upgraded our

assignments. This course opened me to a new writing perspective, it was a bit difficult to
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acclimate but with all the resources within the class it made it a bit easier. Writing 2 was a great

experience which led to multiple new open doors in the writing world.

One would believe that taking multiple courses would make writing at this point easy.

There are always ups and downs when it comes to writing within different genres. Personally, I

tend to have moments where I struggle immensely. I have multiple weaknesses, one of those

being that I am a chronic procrastinator. I will know that I have an assignment and I will not

want to touch it until I am forced to. There have been times in this class as well as others where I

know that I have to write an essay but I will wait a couple days once it is due to do it. There have

been moments where my productivity is based on external problems whereas most of the time it

is something internal within me. I also tend to have writer's block which can be another reason

for my procrastination. I have certain times where I can’t write a single word, I have no creativity

and no idea of how to begin writing. Not to mention that I occasionally can’t even come up with

a title for my papers. My writer's block results in the worst possible rough drafts. Anne Lamott

wrote,” Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.

Start by getting something – anything – down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft

is the downdraft – you just get it down”(2). There were times as I felt that I could simply just not

write anything as my brain was struggling to develop ideas then I look back to the reading and

remember that anything is something. Through Lamott’s work I was able to realize that horrible

rough drafts are acceptable, that is the whole point of them therefore I should stop overthinking

the process. Even the smallest and weirdest ideas can help build something great. I believe that

another weakness I have has to be how hard I am on myself. I constantly believe that my work is

horrible. An example of this is within my WP1 submission I wrote,” My translation lacks a

couple of things and is far from perfect but I believe I was able to include key concepts from the
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article over the lyrics.” In which Andersson responded,”I thought it was really creative, and I

think you might be a bit too harsh on yourself, but I get that even though it was a tough project.”

I tend to tweak my work about a hundred times before I turn it in. It doesn’t help that most of my

work is always late. I was able to properly work over my weaknesses by addressing them at

hand. If I had time at work before the kids I care for got there I tried to do a bit of my work in

order to stop myself from procrastinating. I tend to begin my work late therefore when I am

doing it I rush more than I should to turn it in, resulting in poor work. I would also try to work

on it during their homework time when they didn’t need help on their own work.

I like to think that I also have a couple strengths. I am able to view my writing for a

second time and make great changes to them. It can definitely be a bit cringe to read your own

horrible work but it is definitely fun to change it up. As Giles mentioned, “Bishop responded to

my note asking by asking questions focused entirely on helping me refine my intentions for the

piece, and I realized my task wasn’t to please or to dazzle her. I stopped worrying about how

awkward the reflection wasm stopped worrying about how to please the teacher, and started

actually reflecting and thinking. New habits and ways of thinking formed. And unexpectedly, all

the hard decisions about revising for the next draft began to come more easily” (193). I have

entered this class with high expectations of my own writing, safe to say I was humbled. During

the first writing project I felt a little down as I believed I was not going to be able to answer the

prompt properly. Now, I can say that I have faced different writing challenges and now I am able

to write genre to genre translations therefore I feel a little bit more confident in my ability to

write.

Since our school runs in a quarter system it seems as if there wasn’t enough time to do as

much as we possibly could. With that being said the fact that I procrastinated often didn’t help
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me out at all. We ran for ten weeks on classes and while I turned in my work late, all my work

piled up and I was left with more than if I would have started sooner. If we had more time in this

course I would have liked to review writing projects a couple of more times as well as create a

better final assignment. For future references, I will begin working on my assignments earlier as

well as do a better job of reviewing my work. With that being said for my first writing project I

would have created a makeshift Genius lyric page in order to make my work seem a bit more

professional. As for my second project I would have liked to create a visual slideshow which

resembles a digital diary in order to incorporate my diary entry.

For my final assignment in Writing 2 I will create a portfolio. It will include all of my

major work. There will be three different pages in which I introduce myself and the purpose of

my portfolio. The other two pages will include my first and second project submissions. My

work will be edited once more in order to create the best possible work I can within the ten week

mark that this course is instructed in. For my fist submission I plan on creating a Genius page

with the lyrics, it will most likely not be an exact replica but something similar. Meanwhile for

the second submission I want to create a digital diary. I am not quite sure if I will have the time

to create the digital diary that I had stated previously, hopefully time allows for it. My WP2 was

something that I seemed to struggle with immensely. It took me a good amount of time to be able

to find sources that correlated closely to what I was in search for. My first execution of the

project was poor, it lacked much of the essential work and was more of a shell. The project

builder helped a lot but I was simply looking at the wrong information to begin with. Keeping

this in mind I plan on being more in detail with the instruction for future assignments. The

portfolio will then be graded as to showcase my work created in the course and the execution of

it all.
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References List

Ball, C. E., Sheppard, J., & Arola, K. L. (2014). Writer/designer: A guide to making

Multimodal Projects. Bedford/St. Martins.

Lamott, A. (2005). Shitty first drafts - University of Kentucky.

https://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%20Drafts.pdf

Giles, S. (2010). Writing spaces. Writing Spaces.

https://writingspaces.org/past-volumes/reflective-writing-and-the-revision-process-

what-were-you-thinking/