I have never enjoyed re-reading my writing under any circumstances. I don’t find it beneficial because I can be very nit picky about everything I write about. I always end up changing all of my thoughts because I think I sound uneducated when I write. This assignment has definitely challenged my usual ways and forced me to look closely at previous FYS reflections. 

I have noticed tremendous growth in my writing from my first post to my more recent. With my growing knowledge of Arabian culture, my writing reflects that. I can see that I am more confident with making claims and I know how to back up my claims with a lot of evidence. There are many things that have remained good about my writing such as my use of language and word choice. I hope to continue to grow my vocabulary to sound more sophisticated. 

This course has encouraged me to keep writing. “Keep writing” is a broad term and has taken me a while to learn. The first topic we discussed in class was, what kind of writing you do and don’t like. I have never liked creative writing because I struggle with coming up with ideas without any guidelines or rubric. I can confidently say that creative writing has grown on me. I feel a lot better writing about a topic in any way I want to. Growing up, being exposed to the typical 5 paragraph essays with a topic sentence and literary devices so the switch to college writing and creative writing has been challenging. 

The most significant thing I have learned this semester was how to elaborate on a topic. Rather than surface level discussion, it can be crucial to dissect a certain thing you are writing about. This is something I learned while writing our first essay. My topic explored how women were viewed in Arabian culture. I used 3 quotes and instead of using more, I analyzed and picked apart each word and phrase in the quotes. By doing this, I showed that I was educated on what I was writing about and made my essay so much stronger. 

My process of writing has in some ways stayed the same but differs in complexity. I have always read and comprehend a text and task and then started to write. Now I do the same things but I made a bulleted list of everything I want to talk about before I piece together the writing. By doing this I can accurately write about all of the things I wanted to discuss. I have also tried to re-read my own writing a few times to see if i make any mistakes as well as doing peer review. I didn’t like peer review before this class but it is really helpful to see what my writing looks like from another perspective. 

In general, I like all of my previous FYS writing assignments. If I had to choose one to rewrite, it would probably be “Should we be reading the nights?” I think I could have gone in depth more about what I particularly liked about the nights as well as identify some possible counterclaims fot reading the nights. I enjoyed this task but I think I could have spent more time analyzing certain Tales I found interesting.