Georgia Walters

Intermediate Composition

M1  Reflective Analysis 

15 September 2020

        Module One Reflective Analysis

Since I’ve started on our first module assignment, I have learned a great deal of knowledge on what exactly goes into the “About Me” assignment. By reading through the assigned readings, popular blog posts, and reading through my peers’ “About Me” assignments, I was able to learn that writing “about me” is actually much more than just summarizing my characteristics, it is a whole genre. 

I’ll admit that when I had first started this assignment I originally did not believe that I would learn anything new that I hadn’t known before.  I assumed that the assignment would go by quickly, and I honestly just considered it to be an extended version of my introduction, but once I began reading my classmates’ version of their “About Me”, I realized that there was much more for me to learn and write about. One of the most important things  I learned from my peers’ “About Me” pieces was that there are tons of ways to say something in a different way than someone else. I found it very interesting how many of my peers and I were saying very similar things about ourselves, such as our hobbies and majors, but we all had totally different ways of expressing our words into our writing. By reading the work of my peers, I was able to find ways to put more personality into my writing. 

  I have also learned a lot from the readings we have done in this module. In one of the articles we read,  “16 Emojis You’ve Been Using Wrong”, it talks about how  emojis  can be interpreted in different ways sometimes. An emoji could mean one thing to one person, but mean something totally different to someone else. For example, the article stated that, “According to Unicode, this is a woman making an “OK” gesture. Does anybody actually do this when trying to signal that they’re OK?” (Escobar).  In my family, the “OK” gesture has always been used to tell one another that we are okay, but to other people it may not mean that all.  This article taught me that ways of expression are different for everyone and that it is all up to interpretation. 

Another one of the assigned writing  pieces that significantly helped me in my writing was the article, “Shitty First Drafts”, by Anne Lamott. In the article she states, “The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place knowing that on one is going to see it and that you can shape it later” (Lamott).  This one sentence is probably what helped me the most when writing my “About Me” post. Although I enjoy writing, I usually have a “writer’s block” where I have no idea where or how to start my paper. I tend to think too far into things and I just leave myself stuck wondering what to write, but after reading her article and giving her technique a try, I was able to let myself write whatever I wanted and just clean it up after. 

Lastly, another subject that I learned from the readings that I feel that I didn’t know much about before this class started was genres. I had already known of the genres taught to us in high school, but after working on this module I’ve learned that genre is so much more than just the type of writing you are making. In the article, “Genre in the Wild” by Lisa Bickmores, she states that, “The term genre means “kind, sort, or style” and is often applied to kinds of art and media, for instance, sorts of novels, films, television shows, and so on” (Bickmore). At first when I read this I felt like I already knew everything about genres, but as I continued reading I learned that we are able to be our own genres when it comes to our writing. 

Overall I feel that Module One and the “About Me” assignment has really helped me gain a better understanding on how I am able to create my own genre when it comes to writing about myself, and even just my writing pieces in general. Genre is our own expression and interpretation of how we want our writing to be perceived. 

Works Cited

Bickmore, Lisa. “GENRE in the WILD: Understanding Genre Within Rhetorical (Eco)Systems.”     Go to the Cover Page of Open English @ SLCC, Open English @ SLCC, 1 Aug. 2016, openenglishatslcc.pressbooks.com/chapter/genre-in-the-wild-understanding-genre-within-rhetorical-ecosystems/.

Escobar, Sam. “16 Emojis You’ve Been Using All Wrong.” Good Housekeeping, Good Housekeeping, 21 Mar. 2018, http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/g3601/surprising-emoji-meanings/.

“Shitty First Drafts” Anne Lamott From: Bird by Bird.    http://www.asu.edu/courses/fms209/total-readings/lamott-shittyfirstdrafts.pdf.