Metacognitive

Reflection Essay

Samantha Kunianski
3.17.16
Writing 2 De Piero

Well, to begin I can start by saying that this class has been a long time coming for me. I
never seemed to have an early enough pass time to get into a writing 2 class with any teacher,
let alone one where I had the unheard of ability to pick my teacher. How I went from entering
my pass time with zero sections open to every single one of them open probably confuses you
as much as it confused me, but here I amthis girl just finished writing 2. I think when I came
into this class I had certain expectations about what a university-required class looked like.
Sure, there were certain requirements that the class entailed, but they didnt have nearly the
same prevalence that I thought that they would.
Despite all of the writing and English classes that I have taken throughout high school,
the words genre, conventions, and moves were all concepts that I was unfamiliarwithin
the context of the classroom. As we walked through each of these in class, I began to recognize
that these words were not entirely new to me, they were simply new in their application. I
wrote in my first thlog, all the way back from the beginning of January, This week in class I
largely expanded my knowledge on the subject of genres. I have always considered the word
genre in the sense of its usage in movies, music, and bookscomedy, horror, country, rap,
romance, non-fiction. However, in both class and Dirks text Navigating Genres we explored
the word genre in a previously unfamiliar context, writing. Its almost challenging after taking
this class to think about genre the way that I had previouslyin such a narrow context of its
entire definition.

Aside from PB1A and 1B, WP1 was the first opportunity that I really had to display
everything that I had learned in the first few weeks of class. I think that the best piece of advice
that I was given for that essay specificallythough it has vast applicationsis to choose a topic
that is interesting to you. It sounds like perhaps the most obvious in advice, but regardless it
proved to be the most helpful. Personally, when I get to pick the topic of my essay, project, or
anything else, a topic that I am most interested in often differs from a topic that I think will be
the easiest to write about. I discovered that there is a seemingly perfect balance that I should
seek to find, one that is both interesting to me but also appropriately fits the assignments
description. Honestly, one of the first thoughts that came to my mind when we were exposed
to the assignment was something relating to foodI love food. Soon after followed a comment
that Zack made about topics that other students have chosen in the past Make sure to choose
something with enough content to delve into. One student examined different pizza menus,
and had a bit of a tough time pulling out enough information. So, I chose a different interest of
mine. Hockey.
Though overall my WP1 turned out to be a solid essay, I learned that it struggled the
most in structure. I realized that a large part of why I chose to initially structure my essay the
way that I did was due to previous experiences. It made sense to me to go from one source, to
the next, and again on to the next. However, this essay was not all about analyzing each source
independently, but more so about analyzing sources in their relation to each other. In my
revision of this essay I worked to accomplish the latter goal. My revised essay was not only
strengthened by structural changes, but also by a larger reliance on textual evidence from
course readings. I dont think I realized, until after I went back through and edited both of my

essays, how incredibly useful our course readings could be. The transitions that were missing
between particular sentences and paragraphs? Fixed with including course readings. Lacking
specificity and examples? Fixed with course readings. This was kind of one of those golden
realization moments, how everything we were doing tied together and really clicked.
One of the most interesting as well as informative parts of the course to me was reading
How to Read Like a Writer by Mike Bunn. This essay helped me to view readings from a
different perspective, by noticing the moves that a writer makes. Initially, I really wasnt sold on
the whole idea of moves, but this was before I fully understood what they meant. A writer can
make moves to help him accomplish the goal of each piece, and thus being able to recognize
them can help a reader to more clearly understand a writers intentions. For me, as a visual
learner, I found that watching videos and working to pick out those moves first made finding
moves in our readings easier. After working with moves for a bit of time, throughout class and
on my initial submission of WP2, as well as revising WP2, I learned that value from moves arises
from recognizing significant moves. For instance, acknowledging an authors choice to conceal
the identity of the patient is more valuable than noting an authors choice to write in a two-
column format.
WP2 wasnt supposed to be easy, and it definitely lived up to that promise. I really
struggled with this essay, especially with how to include each aspect of the prompt. When I
initially wrote this essay I went about it from a very structured standpoint, which is sort of a
weird word to choose since I again struggled significantly with the structure of my essay. I think
my main issue here was trying to tackle each aspect of the prompt individually, which led me to
lose my overall argument throughout the paper. I also lost the main ideas of my topic and

sources, so essentially I was just very lost. When I revisited my paper I tried to keep in mind the
so what, who cares? question. I distinguished between different types of conventions that I
recognized and moves that the author made in order to add clarity for the reader. With this
paper in particular I found the reverse outlining part of the portfolio to be extremely helpful.
When I looked back at my initial submission for the paper I realized that several of my
paragraphs were lacking a strong connection to the argument that I had posed in my thesis
statement.
Then came transformations, which I found to be one of the coolest parts of the course.
The third writing project allowed a perfect combination of challenge and creativity, even with
the caveat of requiring the initial scholarly article to be from the writing field. I feel like the
reason behind wanting to be able to pick the article to transform comes from what I mentioned
at the beginning of this reflectionthe best advice I received was picking a topic you are
interested in. Now, Im not not interested in writing, but I also have a variety of very strong
interests outside of this class. One classmate made a comment about how we all have different
majors, and that being able to transform a scholarly piece from that specific field would be a
great (though still challenging) opportunity. Looking back on my work for WP3, I still wish that I
had more time to complete the project as thoroughly as I would have liked. With so much to do
in such a short quarter, it is of course challenging to appropriately budget time for each
assignment. I felt like if I had had a bit more time to work with my source, my work could have
largely benefitted.
In one of the last journal questions of class, we were asked what reflecting meant, and
what its purpose was. I think my response, even as first order writing (another concept I was

unaware of prior to this class), was rather meaningful. It says Reflecting can be a way to think
back about the work youve done and assess the quality of the work you produced as well as
especially focus on what worked and what didnt. A lot of times when youre writing you dont
take time to stop and think about all of the decisions that youve made, the process youve
taken to accomplish the final project, and especially the comments youve received post-
completion. From this class, more than anything else, Ive learned how when you grow (in this
case in writing, though the concept can be applied to any instance), it is important to both
recognize the growth that you have made, as well as demonstrate it.
I wasnt especially stoked on the idea of having to essentially re-write my two writing
projects, as well as explain the changes that I made. After I began revising my first essay,
however, I began to realize that it maybe wouldnt be as bad as I had initially anticipated.
Following what has seemed to be the overall motto of this courseI realized why we were
doing what we were doing. It was sort of a second chance per say to demonstrate all that
weve learned over the quarter. Instead of writing an entirely new essay for the final, we
revised our past work to explicitly show the progress that weve made. Regardless of how clich
it may sound, all of the work that I have put into this did really seem to pay off. I can see a huge
improvement from the initially submissions of my writing projects to the revised versions. Im
honestly extremely proud of the work that I have put forth in this portfolio, and I hope it comes
across in the vast adjustments that I have made. Im leaving this quarter with a writing 2 sized
bag of tips and tricks to help me in all of my future writing venturesIm sure Ill be thanking
you later.