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Semester Reflection

Rachel Thomas reflects on her writing development over the semester in an industrial design class. She acknowledges that she still struggles with expression and meeting word counts, but sees improvement in writing details. The scheduled drafts helped break her toxic cycle of procrastinating and only doing one draft. She was able to get ideas down on paper without worrying about usefulness at first. She demonstrated reading and writing skills best through research, finding a variety of sources and determining their usefulness. Going forward, she believes drafting multiple drafts will help with design briefs and other potential writing tasks in her career. Meeting the class goals of writing as a process and in her discipline helped improve her skills.

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15 views2 pages

Semester Reflection

Rachel Thomas reflects on her writing development over the semester in an industrial design class. She acknowledges that she still struggles with expression and meeting word counts, but sees improvement in writing details. The scheduled drafts helped break her toxic cycle of procrastinating and only doing one draft. She was able to get ideas down on paper without worrying about usefulness at first. She demonstrated reading and writing skills best through research, finding a variety of sources and determining their usefulness. Going forward, she believes drafting multiple drafts will help with design briefs and other potential writing tasks in her career. Meeting the class goals of writing as a process and in her discipline helped improve her skills.

Uploaded by

api-665752781
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Rachel Thomas 1

RC 2001

Professor Lowe

8 March 2023

Semester Reflection

It’s hard to say how I feel like I’ve changed over this semester when it comes to my

writing abilities because I feel like I haven’t. I still have trouble expressing myself through my

writing and I struggle to meet word counts and page counts. I tend to be hesitant to write more

because I feel like it sounds forced. Despite all of this, I do see some improvement in the details

of my writing.

In classes that I had to write for in the past, I would wait until a few days before a paper

was due to start writing. This meant that I only did one draft and didn’t give myself enough time

to revise. I would try to get the paper perfect on the first try. This kept me from being able to

dump all of my ideas onto the page because I was getting stuck in the beginning paragraphs.

The schedule of this class and the number of drafts that we turned in helped me break this

toxic cycle. I was able to put a bunch of ideas into my document and not worry about whether

they were useful or not. I simply got my words out first, then changed them around and cut some

content out in the next draft. It wasn’t until the last draft of my papers that I started to feel

confident about my work, but this was because I had more time to think through what I was

saying and revise it.

I think I demonstrated my reading and writing skills best through my research and the

sources I found. I was able to find a variety of both scholarly and popular sources, then

determine if they would be useful to me. I found that many of the popular sources weren’t very

helpful to me, but they provided an overview of topics that I wanted to discuss in my writing.
Thomas 2

They also gave me keywords and terminology that I could further research and find scholarly

articles about.

As an industrial design student, I don’t see myself using a lot of writing in the future, but

there may be some opportunities. For example, writing a brief for a design project. These briefs

typically aren’t long, but they need to explain your design intent. I think with what I’ve learned

from this class about creating many early drafts will help me create well-written and clear design

briefs. Also, I may have to write an article or paper about a product to get people interested in it.

I can use my voice to make the product sound appealing and useful to consumers.

In the syllabus for this class Goal #1 emphasized that writing is a process that includes

drafting, revising, and proofreading. Of all of the goals listed in our syllabus, this was the one

that I think I met best. I learned to take time in drafting papers and to both give and receive

useful feedback. Goals #2, #3, and #4 deal with writing in the discipline, which is something I

hadn’t done before this semester. I was challenged to examine how other product designers use

writing and I had to learn how to properly use written work for my discipline. Lastly, Goal #5

challenged me to dig deeper into my research and find new means of obtaining information. I

had used the library database in the past, but I relied on it more heavily this semester to find

scholarly sources. I also found data from the EPA that I was able to analyze and help back up my

argument in my Arguning in the Discipline paper. With the new techniques and practices I

learned over this semester, I was able to meet these course goals and improve my writing skills.

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