It’s a strange thing, writing. There’s no beginning. There’s no end. You decide what comes first. You decide what comes last. You decide what doesn’t come at all. And right now, you is me, also known as I, and I don’t know what goes where.

            Before I begin my reflection, let me just say that although I really have no distinct writing style, such as writing this in a letter or a short story or a string of text messages or something I could never even fathom, I do have my own voice—one of straightforwardness, sarcasm, humor, and a lot of those long hyphens (—). I write like I speak, which is why nothing I ever write honestly is appropriate enough to submit. The first college essay I ever wrote included this marvelous gem: “What I’m looking for is a college that will prepare me for this ‘real world’ so that when I get there, I can actually get a job that I enjoy and not in some godforsaken place, like a college admissions office or something.” Yes, I just insulted the people who hold the power to reject me from college. Obviously I meant it to read as sarcasm because I could never be that dumb, but apparently sarcasm doesn’t read exceptionally well… And now to begin with my reflection.

            Honestly, I chose to revise my literary analysis paper because it was my worst grade. I struggled revising it because I couldn’t really connect with the paper; however, I couldn’t connect with my response paper either and my short shorts were my best assignment so those didn’t make sense to revise. Nonetheless, I still tried to make my literary analysis paper as cohesive as possible. In order to accomplish this, I tried to give it more structure and have the thesis tie in more. On the other hand, my “On Education” piece was something I really enjoyed writing, but it made zero sense after I read it back when revising. I realized that my original version attempted to discuss both being grateful and having structure to our lives. When revising, I made the paper strictly about being grateful and I think it makes much more sense.

            As a writer in general, I think I’ve become more confident in my abilities after taking this class. However, I also think my writing has improved in structure. By the time I wrote my final piece, I really felt like I started focusing more on my structure in papers. However, I still am struggling to incorporate one voice and one focus to my pieces. My most successful piece was probably my short shorts (and not just because it was my best grade). I genuinely enjoyed writing my short shorts and I think they turned out the best of all my assignments because they best captured what I aimed for them to capture.

            Okay now let’s take a break from all that serious reflection stuff and focus on something way more important—how awesome does this website look? I know, really awesome. For the duration of this assignment, anytime I wanted to procrastinate, I would work on the site. Creation has always been my number one passion and I enjoyed this assignment because it’s probably the most creative final project I’ve ever done, but hopefully not the most creative assignment I’ll ever have to do here at Georgetown.

            On an unrelated note, let’s return to reflecting. If you noticed, I also posted a paper I wrote entitled “SpongeBob, Freedom, and Responsibility” on this site. This paper was my philosophy final paper for the semester and I decided that the most acceptable way to approach the topics of freedom and moral responsibility was by using SpongeBob Squarepants. I feel like this deserves to be included in this portfolio because it demonstrates my ability to take something serious (in this case freedom and responsibility) and combine it with something light-hearted (SpongeBob). This parallels my Homelessness article, which takes a serious topic like homelessness and combines it with a light-hearted The Onion style. However, I still maintained a serious tone throughout the paper, whereas I used a sarcastic tone for The Onion piece.

            Now let’s be real, my greatest strength as a writer boils down to one thing—my use of that extended hyphen. All jokes aside though, I do think my greatest strength as a writer is my use of humor and light-heartedness. I try not to make anything too boring, albeit it’s impossible to never write any boring papers (see: every paper I wrote in high school). As far as weaknesses go, it would probably be that I often have trouble organizing my thoughts into a well-structured argument. This weakness can be attributed to the fact that at any given moment, my attention is a million places; for example, wow that chair is really nice and I definitely just saw that guy send a Snapchat.

            How do I improve this? Simple: write more. No basketball player has ever gotten better by just sitting down and thinking about playing basketball better. The only way for me to improve my writing (and specifically the structure of my writing) is by constantly writing more and seeking out help. Even over just the course of this semester, I feel like my paper structure has gotten better (although it could use some more help). I think this ties perfectly into how my sense of the components of writing has changed over the semester. I would break down writing into a few components: structure, tone, audience, argument, evidence, etc. Okay, I’ll admit that that was a few more than I thought, but I think that’s what has really changed over the course of the semester. I’ve started looking at writing on a much more detailed level and I’ve started recognizing more ways a paper can be broken down than just tone and argument. In the end though, all these components are equally important and I would say that realizing this has been my largest takeaway from the semester.

            We’ve come to the end of our journey together, HUMW 011-25, and it’s been a fun one. I’ve learned quite a bit about myself as a writer and you’ve learned quite a bit about me as a person. If we ever meet again, you can bet yourself that I’ll submit my Homelessness paper again and again. I mean come on, that paper is the [expletive].