I was a weak writer to put it simply going into my first semester of English in college after being at a high school that was lax in the level of work a student produced and did not see myself to be a fan of English class. When it came to my writing choices, I seemed to be chaotic at times. Having unfinished concepts and thoughts throughout all of my drafts, using clever words to make up for bad writing skills, and frequently using poor grammar that caused me to become confused and had to redo that thought. But as the semester goes on, I start to notice that I’m becoming better from each lecture, assignment, and peer review—learning how to conduct effective resource searches on the internet and in the CCNY database, for example, or knowing when to paraphrase or use a quote. Of course, pointing out any mistakes that will help me write better and I can then apply what I learnt to other assignments.

The Creative Nonfiction Essay is a writing exercise that asks us to write formally about three or more aspects of your identity, including how media influences those aspects or was an influences itself. The course learning objective of developing drafting strategies was one that this project allowed me to achieve. I used an outline at the start of the writing process to help me develop ideas, allowing me to test out various concepts and essay styles. Now it is time to discuss how those factors have influenced my identity after identifying them and deciding how I wish to address them. I discussed the characteristics each element offered me to illustrate how it affected me. After creating an outline with a thesis statement, many parts for each aspect, and a conclusion, I was then prepared to write the CNF. This skill to draft has been useful to me when starting and arranging future assignments.

The Exploratory Essay is a research assignment that explores the class’s theme of media and identity. Finding research sources was one of the CLOs that this assignment helped to fulfill. With  the class being taught how to use the CCNY database and Google Scholar after visiting the library and taking the librarian’s lesson, this helped with future assignments.

The last assignments are the presentation, multimodal translation, and research critical analysis essay. The RCA is a research paper that expanded upon the Exploratory Essay topic but with a stance, instead of starting from the beginning I used bit and piece of the research on the Exploratory Essay and then further the research and storing it in Annotated Bibliography. The Annotated Bibliography serves with achieving a CLO, composition of texts that integrate your stance with appropriate sources. The full citation of research sources is included, along with a summary that highlights the primary idea of the source, the idea that is relevant to my topic, and how I intend to use the source in my RCA.

After finishing my research for my RCA, I prepared a first draft for peer review with my classmates and my professor, to have them point out any flaws. After receiving feedback on my work this allowed me to engage in the collaborative and social components of writing processes, which helped me reach a CLO. My perspective on my research topic changed as a result of my professor and peer’s remarks, and I was able to improve my thesis statement and the format of my essay.

Last but not least, the multimodal translation and presentation are both new approaches of RCA in a new medium. This  assignment has helped me achieve the course learning outcome, explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations. While MMT and presentations both cover identical topics, they have different purposes and target audiences.