Self Assessment Essay
This semester has introduced me to several new forms of writing and has shown me my weaknesses and how to improve upon them. Entering this semester I had already formed solid opinions on my writing capabilities, as outlined in the reflection titled, “Beginning of Semester Goals”. However, this class reminded me that my journey as a writer is far from over.
One area I believe my writing significantly improved in is reading and drafting and editing. For every essay this semester I started out writing an outline, for my personal use, and a rough draft that had to be submitted. This definitely improved my writing capabilities because it kept me on track and allowed for a solid base for my final versions to be built upon. These tactics came in especially handy for long papers, such as the lab report. While this assignment was a group assignment we had an outline for the entire report and I created an outline of the points I wanted to hit for the sections I was working on alone. In my semester goals reflection, I also stated that I depended on outside criticism to edit my papers. I feel that through these papers I successfully became more accountable for my own writing. I could not be dependent on outside criticism for most of these assignments so I honed my ability to create a strong thesis for my writing and determine for myself whether I was consistent and effective in accomplishing my predetermined goal.
One area I still need to improve in is my source use practices. I struggled to find appropriate articles for assignments such as the New York times and Annotated Bibliography assignments. Coming into the semester I was confident in my abilities however the trouble I encountered this semester has made me reevaluate my ability to effectively find the right the sources for my writing pieces. On the other hand, my citing capabilities have been dramatically expanded. This semester my writing pieces showcase APA style and CSE formats of citations, citations that I had previously never used before. Another area I improved in was my utility of databases. Before this class, I never utilized legit databases but this semester many of my articles came from databases such as EBSCO, NBIH, and google scholar.
Lastly, my collaborative writing capabilities were challenged this semester, primarily by the lab report assignment. For this assignment, I had to coordinate with two other people, with different schedules on a large paper. Because this report was a group effort we all had to compromise on our writing goals and debated the most effective way to achieve these goals. This posed several challenges but in the end, the report and presentation were successful. The collaboration was often helpful, especially for the purpose of peer editing which allowed me to obtain an outside perspective on my works.
All in all, I learned several new strategies to improve my writing and became more self-aware in the parts of writing I am lacking in. This course has allowed me to grow as a writer and editor and will positively impact the way I write in the future.
