THE END-final reflection

Welcome to the end! It's been a long 10 weeks, but we're finally here. Here I'll reflect on my 10 week journey and see how I've changed.

Transformative Learning

Truly learning results in change to one's way of thinking or acting. One of the transformative learning experiences I had was when we did the podcast. The podcast was a unique project that taught me a lot about collaboration. This project transformed my way of thinking as I collaborated with people having different interest and point of view than my own. By integrating my ideas with those of my group members, I learned to listen to them and see the course question through their perspectives. Openness is the ability to look at a topic through new perspectives and this project really helped me with that. Having a new perspective allowed me to have a deeper understanding of the question and even guided me to answer the question differently than I initially wanted. It also taught me the importance of transitions. Doing a podcast requires effective transitions to make it flow. Although transitions are important in essays, understanding the disruption in flow when there is a lack of transitions is difficult when reading and easier when it is speaking.

Another transformative experience was when we read other people's works to deepen our understanding of the topic and teach us to be better editors. Reviewing my group's essays, allowed me to get a new perspective on the course question because they would touch on topics that I wasn't initially interested, similar to how the podcast introduced me to new ideas that I incorporated into my essay. These assignments also taught me how to be a better editor as I read to through my peer's writing. Seeing their strengths and weaknesses allowed me to better see my own strength and weaknesses. It showed me the importance of peer review because your peers can help you fix your essay and reviewing their can give you a new perspective on your own work.

Problems & A Plan for the Future

Grammar is still one of my biggest weaknesses. Although the connect practice sessions helped me improve and learn a lot, I still don't feel confident in my abilities to identify grammar mistakes in my own writing. Doing the connect practice sessions, I often struggled on concentrating as the long sessions made my eyes strains and lose focus, preventing me from receiving the full benefit from the sessions. In the future, I should take breaks, which are difficult for me to do. I should also invest my time into grammar practice outside of school because it would help me learn more.

Another weakness I still have is self-revision. The self-review of the full draft of my essay was difficult to do. Although I understand that my essay has flaws, it is difficult to go through my own writing and find them because I understand what I'm trying to say, even though others may not. To work on this in the future, I should just force myself to look over my writing or have google read my writing to me, so I can find the flaws. Another method I can use is looking at individual pieces of my essay then connecting them together to see if they make sense independently and collectively or use my peers to help me review my essay.