Zimmer 1 Mollie Zimmer English 2100 Professor Camargo 1 May 2013 Me to a T: Reflective Essay This semester has been

a semester of learning curves for myself as a writer. Coming into English 2100 at UNCC, I had one style of writing and one style only. I had never been shown other ways to get to the finished project. Now I know that there are multiple ways to approach a piece of writing. By this Im referring to Anne Lamotts Shitty First Drafts and Richard Mariuss Writing Drafts. Each article shared insight and suggestions into how to write. In Lamotts article I learned that one should just write. Just write and write till you cannot write anymore. I find this useful because you get your thoughts out and dont overthink it. It is also helpful to keep in mind that your first draft will probably be pretty shitty. Though I did not find Richard Mariuss article helpful, it is always useful to know other ways in which to write your papers. Marius suggested to just write without backspacing or any kind of editing. I do not write like this. I itch if I feel like I cannot edit my work. When asked how we felt about his process, I responded with this, I am a delete/backspace kind of girl. My first draft is most certainly going to be a shitty first draft. Its going to be a mess. I like to re-read what I write as I go along (Zimmer.) As a writer, I do know that I have strengths and weaknesses. My main strength is my use of quotes. Where I chose to place the quotes and what quotes I chose are usually

Zimmer 2 beneficial to my papers. Referring to Essay 2, when I describe in my own words how onlookers noticed the body that Mr. Hooper was looking at shudder, I placed a quote after the description that directly correlated to my findings. Onlookers noticed the body shudder as Mr. Hooper stood there. A person, who watched the interview between the dead and the living, scrupled not to affirm, that, at the instant when the clergymans features were disclosed, the corpse had slightly shuddered, rustling the shroud and muslin cap, though the countenance retained that composure of death (Hawthorne 337). A parson is supposed to be an individual in the community that is not feared. One could assume that the body shuddering, even in death, represents how fearful the young woman continues to be of Mr. Hooper (Zimmer 3). I do have more weaknesses that I am aware of then I do strengths. I have a difficult time with paragraph placement sometimes. Another weakness that I have is I get very wordy. I have only just noticed this wordiness and I know it is not something I have done in the past. Usually I start off these wordy sentences with Considering that or With that or This is evident All three of these examples I have used interchangeably in my papers. I do not directly relate this to this class, but I have seen myself change negatively as a writer. I see my weaknesses outweigh my strengths. This has become very frustrating and has led to what I believe are poor papers. A clear example would be Essay 1. Overthinking, wordiness, and frustration set in and made it extremely difficult to write this paper, which does not even meet the requirements. That all being said, there is much to take away from English 2100. As stated before, I am aware that there are multiple ways to write a paper. This can prove to be

Zimmer 3 extremely helpful in the future. I was also not used to working with my peers and having them proofread my work. Professor Camargo asked us to write about how we felt about peer work shopping. I responded fairly negatively. I dont like people, other than the teacher, reading my writing. I can appreciate what other students have to say about my work, but Id rather have feedback from the teacher (Zimmer). After we completed the workshop, I was more in favor towards that process.