Reflecting more on my writing experiences

1. What were the biggest challenges you faced this semester, overall? My biggest challenge this semester was an overall lack of motivation and excitement about school. For some reason I really lost some steam this semester. I think that it may have had something to do with a lack of direction about what I'm even in school for. I also worked alot this semester, especially in October. This contributed to pretty high stress levels and not as much importance placed on my classes.

2. What did you learn this semester about your own time management, writing and editorial skills? I learned that the entire process is more enjoyable and efficient when I care about what I'm writing about and put focused effort into my writing. I did a fair bit of bullshitting to try and finish blog-posts faster, but looking back I wish I would've just put the work in. I think that I would've gotten more out of it, and the process would've been easier if I had just buckled down and put effort into everything. Producing mediocre work doesn't feel very good.

3. What do you know about the concept of 'genre'? Explain how understanding this concept is central to being a more effective writer. Genre is the format and conventions that one uses in writing a piece on a specific platform for a specific audience. It's important to understand this concept as a writer, because your job is very different depending on what genre you're writing in: A scientific research proposal is going to have different conventions, style, and language use than an article or a creative writing piece.

4. What skills from this course might you use and/or develop further in the next few years of college coursework? I think that I need to learn the conventions of all the different genres that I might be writing in, especially some of the more practical styles. I would like to know how to effectively write a grant proposal, conference proposal, hard science research paper, and newspaper article. I also need to work on being concise and not over-wording.

5. What was your most effective moment from this semester in 109H? My most effective moment was when I got pretty excited about the last project and actually put good work in. I'm proud of my final product for that project, and it's because I put effort into it.

6. What was your least effective moment from this semester in 109H? My least effective moment was some of the early blog-posts that I didn't put a whole lot of effort into.

Webb, Michaela. "Compost Farm" 2015