Submit your TWO 3-4 sentence descriptions of the TWO findings below. Make each finding its own paragraph.

Then--go through and comment on THREE different people's findings, offering them DES feedback in terms of these THREE elements outlined above (^).

The discovery I have found about myself as a writer as a result of the UWP 7Y activities is that my mental state and my feelings at the time directly impact the quality of my writing. One piece of evidence I had was the quality of my writing in my first rough draft of the synthesis paper. Many times throughout the writing process, I was very nervous and too scared to try out new ideas. I was still new to college-level writing and focused solely on getting my ideas down that I completely forgot about the actual goal of the paper. This made me realize that it is important to take care of myself and to ensure that I am better, mentally, before writing. I should try exercise or breaks when things get too rough in order to ensure my writing doesn’t suffer.

Finding 2: Staying Focused

Another discovery that I have found about myself as a writer as a result of the UWP 7Y activities is that I need to keep my ideas collected and stay focused. An example of this is in my second revised draft of the synthesis paper in which I was so focused on adding more “analysis” to the paper due to the feedback that I got that the argument of my paper was harder to find. I realize that due to the many ideas, thoughts, and beliefs swirling around in my head, that it is easy for me to lose focus of the task at hand and write about something that isn’t relevant. This is important because I will obviously lose points and my audience’s attention if I go completely off-topic. It is important as a writer to stay on track and stay consistent with my argument, so I can be aware in the future so I don’t make the same mistakes.

2. The second finding I will write about could be peer feedback and workshops. I will explain how I’m getting better at giving feedback and also how I’m learning to use the feedback that I receive. I will compare a comment from the first workshop to one of the latest ones. Since writing will always be collaborative work, this is an important concept to understand.

As a result of the required reading with comments, I discovered I can quickly change my bad habit of poor annotation and comprehension through the assignments from UWP 007Y. I noticed when I was completing the last reading assignment that I was understanding the text quicker and connecting with the reading through my complex analysis skills. Being good at annotating is what led to me having a strong synthesis and improving my skills as a writer all around.

2. Organization skills

As a result of the horizontal reading charts, amongst other resources provided by UWP 007Y, I can confidently say I have improved my organization skills when it comes to writing. Through the HRC's and Eli review workshop feedback, I was able to learn how to organize my thoughts in a way that made sense to the reader. This was significant in my development as a writer because in order to connect with your audience. they have to understand what you're saying. 

2.  analyzing texts - analyzing texts has always been something I didn't put too much importance on. I feel as though assignments such as the HRC chart have really been able to help me with this, along with the article annotations. I believe that this is now a very important step because you cannot produce your best writing without a throughout understanding of the information provided. This class has really helped me not only see the importance but to see the benefit within my own writing and style, within a short period of time. 

I’ve found that my reading skills have greatly improved in this class. I now read for a purpose and am able to read in order to improve my writing skills. The horizontal reading chart, along with The Method have helped me develop my reading skills. This is important to know about myself because I feel that before this class, my reading skills have been sub par. Knowing that I have improved my reading skills has also developed my writing and will continue to develop my writing skills in future class assignments.

The second finding I think is to overcome difficulties and adjust my attitude, because sometimes I feel a little sad when I see the shortcomings of my article and don't want to write, because sometimes I work hard but still don't meet the requirements. I will be disappointed because of such things. However, when I see some activity instructions, I become confident again, such as in the method chart activity, I learned how to make connections using different sources and put them together into a complete conversation and provide good assistance for conversation, which will help me a lot and let me have a way to revise my article. This helps me know that I'm not bad at writing, but I just need to overcome bad emotions and need someone to guide me at some time in order to make progress. And such guidance can help me change back to positive, overcome bad emotions, get more inspiration and improve my writing.

The second finding that I want to highlight is my improvement in revising my writing. The revision plans from Eli were the most helpful because I had to pick the comments that I found most helpful and make a plan on how exactly I was going to use them to improve my essay. This was a helpful finding because before this I would not make a plan on how I was going to revise my work but now I can see that this helped me a lot and will keep using it.

One of the discoveries I made about myself as a writer as a result of UWP7Y is that I take my sweet time reading and annotating articles. An exhibit from our class may be any of the Perusal activities, where we had to read and annotate a scholarly article about college writing. I noticed that I couldn’t just sit down and start annotating, rather I have to read and understand the article first, then I can read it a second time through, adding annotations as I go. The significance of this is that I have identified the best reading comprehension strategy for myself. If I need to read some information and use it in any remote way, I must read it first, to get a basic understanding of what it’s trying to say. Then, I can read it a second time and start processing that information, be it adding my own annotations, or something else.

2) The Significance of Countless Drafts

Before entering this class, I was a writer who thought my work was perfected the first time. I often thought that creating different drafts was not required and wasn't necessary. After conducting writing activities in UWP, I realized that it's the most critical part of writing. During UWP 7Y, we conducted many writing activities including the Elli Workshops consisting of different revised, edited, and final drafts. Within these activities we were told to acknowledge our weaknesses and strengths in order to build our papers stronger and further improved. These workshops really helped me acknowledge that I won't always get it right the first time, and that there's always room for improvement.

The discovery I  made about myself as a writer as the result of annotations is I have accepted changes in my writing when I understand the class material. For example, at the beginning of this course, everyone was assigned to annotate articles my first annotation went as, “ I can totally agree with this first statement because throughout high school, elementary, and junior jr high school. the writing that was taught or the skills of it. Are verily different and were not useful to me as a student in any of those grades.” This made me realize that I was not putting all my effort into my classwork. This was helpful because today I am able to understand my readings and include them as sources in the writing assignments. This awareness helps me continue to develop as a writer by accepting new material and being able to use that information properly in my writing assignments without misunderstanding the source. 

-Synthesis Drafts-

Another discovery I made about myself as a writer as a result of the synthesis drafts is I have accepted the change in my writing to bring me as a writer comfort.  For example, In, my first synthesis draft scaled responses were 3.8 out of 5 stars. Where my conversation was too broad with the sources I included.  This made me accept my peer’s feedback and apply their feedback to my writing. My final synthesis draft scaled responses was 4.5 out of 5 stars because I created relationships between all sources and integrated them into my conversation.  This is significant because it allowed me to reflect on my writing and how I was able to improve my synthesis final draft. This awareness helps me continue to keep writing and not give up on my writing even when it is not the best. 

2. I have discovered that feedback enables me to become a better writer. All the feedback that I have received throughout the writing workshops we had to complete in this class has helped me improve my writing in some way. In the future, I will never worry about receiving feedback or even criticism because I now understand that it can only make my writing better.