Logan Simmons

Megan Keaton
ENC 1102
July 29, 2014
Final Reflection
When I came into this class at the beginning of the semester, I did not have a theory of
writing nor did I even know what a theory of writing was. I did not care about writing, I hated
doing it, and I hated reading it. To be quite honest, most of these things have not changed over
the course of the semester. Even though that may be true, I have been able to develop my own
theory of writing as we have progressed through the semester. Before I took this course I was
never enrolled in any class that forced me to write nearly this much, let alone as thoughtfully.
Every class that I have taken in the prior to this one focused very little on writing, and the most
writing that was ever expected from me as a student was a simple research paper. In this ENC
1102 class, I was forced to write in many ways that I have never had to write before such as
writing thoughtful revision explanations and applying information learned about key terms in
class. I credit my newfound theory of writing to this basic fact.
Allow me to start out by saying that I do not think my theory was necessarily shaped by
any individual assignment or project. In fact, I wasnt even aware of the presence of my theory
of writing until I read about this assignment and started thinking about it. Because of this, it is
kind of difficult to break down the development of my theory based on individual assignments.
However, the assignments that I have completed throughout this semester sparked my brain into
thinking about writing in a different way than I have before. When I wrote my Inquiry Research
Paper and remediated my findings from the Key Terms Exploration Project, I had to think about
writing in some very new ways. In addition to this I had to apply what I had learned and think
about how this new information was affecting the world around me. When we remediated our
Key Terms Exploration Project into a flyer, I had to think about the most effective method of
conveying complex ideas in a manner that was easy to understand. Before doing this project I
never really had to do that before, and that is why I believe that it contributed to my theory of
writing the most. This assignment sparked my thought process for developing my theory. From
writing our Semi-Formal Reflections, Curious Researcher Reading Responses, and presenting
the Curious Researcher Demonstration, my brain was able to change the way that I viewed
writing, and made me start thinking about the way our world works based on our collective
understanding and usage of writing as a society. Before any of these assignments, I never really
thought about the effect that writing has had on each of our lives. This class and the individual
assignments that we were required to complete allowed me to start really thinking about how we
have come this far as a human race, and what makes us so much different than other animals on
this planet.
In addition to the individual assignments that I have described above, in-class activities
such as group discussions and the making of comic strips or flow charts have also helped to
develop my theory of writing. I really loved participating in these in-class activities because they
gave me a chance to apply my knowledge and communicate it with my peers, which ultimately
helps each and every one of us better understand what we were learning. I believe that my theory
of writing can be adapted and applied to teach individuals to love writing, which will help us
advance farther and farther with technologies and collectively as a human race. If more people
develop a love for writing, or at least understand how important it is to our society, than I believe
that we can advance even faster than what is already believed. We are in a golden age of
development, and it is important to get as many individuals involved with helping us as possible.
If we all work together and use writing as a means of communicating and expressing ideas even
more than we already do, then the possibilities for the future are endless.