Dear Mrs. Cook and my peers of UWRT 1102,

            As the semester dwindles down and I finish this UWRT 1102 class, I am writing this to talk about my experiences and how this class has changed me as a writer. Throughout my academic career, writing has always been an extreme challenge for me and definitely did not come easy. I would constantly write in my youth, but really had a hard time developing solid pieces. As I grew up I began to realize the importance of writing and also the prominence. We write every day in many situations that we do not even acknowledge. Writing is incredibly important in our everyday life and we definitely down play its importance.

            Throughout of my middle and high school career I began to care less and less about writing and really tried to avoid it as much as possible. Little did I know I still used it all the time. I would try to stay away from any writing class and definitely procrastinated on any writing homework that I would have. All my pieces in high school were on subjects given to me by my teacher and really never were what I wanted to write about. They always stressed us to make/ defend an argument or to be informative. As I continued to write these papers it became easier, but my papers became dryer and essentially facts needed to get by. I really did not focus on writing structure and anything that is needed to develop a good piece that would be effective.

            Then as I attended college my freshman year at East Carolina University, my writing professor really stressed structure in all writing. He taught me how important it was to all writing that it was structure well and effective. He had basic principles on the layout of each paragraph whether it be the introduction, the body, or even the conclusion. He believed the first way to become a better writer is to clean up the paragraphs and ultimately have a great structure. This was brand new to me and at the beginning I definitely struggled with this concept, but as the year went on I incorporated it into my everyday writing. This definitely did not improve my relationship with writing because it made me feel like everything was so structured.

            After I transferred to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, I enrolled in UWRT 1102 for my Fall 2015 semester. I was incredibly nervous about this class because to this day writing is definitely not one of my strengths. I also did not take a writing class the previous semester, so I knew I would be a little rusty. We began using WordPress to write blogs and this was a complete 180 from my ECU experience because we would only write long papers. This was a huge change and really helped me appreciate writing more. I did not have to worry about structure as much, but instead just write what I believed or thought. The blog was also very broad because we really could write about whatever we were feeling or our beliefs. It made my initial writing experience in the class very enjoyable. It also gave me a brief overview of what to expect in this class.

            This class really made me appreciate all aspects of writing because almost everything in our world incorporates writing. We fail to recognize all the hard work people put in writing pieces and really take them for granted. Writing is probably my weakest subject so it makes me really respect all pieces due to trouble I have with the task. As I begin to appreciate more writing, I honestly am beginning to be able to recognize the discourse communities along with genres in the pieces. This also makes me understand why the writer decided to develop this piece and its significance.

            Then as we got further in the semester we began working on our digital magazine. This was a harder situation for me because I have never written for a magazine before and I really never have read magazines before, so it was very new to me. We got paired with random classmates who had the same interest in certain subjects and were basically set free. The freedom in the class really is a benefit and allowed me to be able to relax more. As we began to develop pieces in our writing group everything came pretty natural and it definitely was not hard to expand on our idea of “The Silent Generation.” It was extremely hard developing a concept that has not been addressed though. We had to team together and with countless ideas we found one that we were able to run with. After that we really struggled with this concept, but as we all worked hard with each other we found one that would work effectively. I really lucked out with my group because there’s always that one kid who does not do the work or care about anything that is going on, but that was definitely not a problem in my group. We really worked well altogether and got a good grade on our final magazine. It ended up looking very good and actually was able to get our desired point across. I really appreciate everyone in my group and have developed friendships with all of them.

            Lastly, finishing of this class with my e-Portfolio came easier than expected. It really was a smooth transition from the digital magazine into the portfolio. While working in our digital magazine group it also was very helpful getting some of feedback and ideas from my peers in my group. After developing a good understanding of the basis of this project it became real easy putting this together and I am very proud of what I have produced. This has also been apparent throughout the classes. I feel like at the beginning of the semester I definitely struggled with the early blogs, but as time went on I calmed down and began to be able to adapt to anything that was thrown in my direction. This will be very beneficial for the rest of my college career because no matter how comfortable I am with an assignment, I will be able to produce a good piece of work. Even though this will be my last writing course at UNC Charlotte, I will continue to use these skills throughout my life and with the help of this class I will definitely be able to produce better pieces. This is just the beginning of my hike up the mountain of success.