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Drew Rinkus
Professor Blandford
UWRT 1103
23 November 2015
Reflection Final
Throughout this semester, I have seen myself grow as a writer. The very thoughtprovoking classes and the in-depth extended inquiry project have really pushed me to create
quality pieces that showcase my strong points as a writer. In fact, this extended inquiry project
has made me take a new approach into my whole writing process.
When I first was thinking of my topic for the extended inquiry project, I wanted to
research a concept that would be interesting to delve into. I looked at different groups, such as
bronies and country music fans, but I was kind of unsure as to what I wanted to look into. My
idea for my project came to me after watching an episode of South Park that focused largely on
political correctness. After watching the episode, I was intrigued enough on the idea of political
correctness that I wanted to use the concept as the subject for my project. When I got to the
Question Session, I had a basic understanding of the topic and had an idea of what direction I
wanted to take my project. I wanted to look at the reasons why political correctness was so
prevalent in our society today, and how different aspects of our lives such as social media and the
news have incorporated the concepts of political correctness. This was the idea I had going into
the final proposal as well, and I ended up getting great feedback from the professor. Professor
Blandford started off her response to my proposal with, Im not 100% sold on your topic. I
thought that I had messed up somewhere, and I was not really prepared to go in a brand new
direction with my topic. However, what Professor Blandford suggested was that I look at the

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concept of political correctness in correlation with other countries besides the United States and
the different countries in Europe. With this suggestion, I decided to take the advice and change
my idea to looking at the concept of political correctness in countries other than the United States
and the countries in Europe. This idea stuck with me from that point to the final essay, and I can
definitely say that it was a major improvement over my first initial idea.
For my research, I decided to go straight to the Academic Search Complete database to
find my information. I wanted to make sure that every piece I was going to use for my research
was at least peer-reviewed and from the J. Murrey Atkins Library either through a database or the
actual library. I actually ended up finding all of my sources for my research from the Academic
Search Complete database. However, it did take a while to find some helpful sources. When I
first started my research, I was searching for articles using political correctness as my keyword.
After looking through the first few pages of suggested articles, I noticed that there were not
many scholarly pieces that incorporated the term political correctness. Most of the pieces were
not looking at the concept of political correctness in the way I wanted to use for my research
paper. Those pieces were looking at political correctness in correlation to politics. So, I
broadened my search by using the keyword social justice. This was what separated the concepts
of political correctness from my original search to the ones that were going to be helpful for me.
When I started reading some of the articles, I found that most of them were looking at data from
the United States. Since I was trying to stay away from that, I kept looking for articles that made
it clear the focus was going to be on a country that was not the United States. That was when I
found my first useful article. This article talked about the dehumanization of Palestinian woman
by Israeli soldiers. It contained an abundance of information about the ways these soldiers were
dehumanizing these women, and a large number of testimonies from the woman and soldiers.

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From this point, I started looking for articles that were as resourceful as this one. I ended up
finding the other four sources by looking through and finding information that would be helpful
to keeping my paper focused on countries in the Middle East. In the end, I had five very credible
sources to build my paper off of.
What surprised me about my research was how there were so many peer-reviewed
articles relating to political correctness in correlation with social justice. I found most of my
information from these articles, and I can safely say that these findings helped narrow my search,
but broaden my ideas. This was the direction I wanted to take when researching, and I am glad
that it worked out for me in this way. When I first started researching, I was not expecting to find
most of my information from the Academic Search Complete database. I also was not expecting
most of my research to come from articles relating more to the social justice aspect of political
correctness. Yet, I can say that this definitely strengthened my idea, and built a great foundation
for my research.
When developing my final essay, I started with gathering the information from my
sources that I wanted to use for the essay. I would use this information to build off of my own
arguments and strengthen them with some analyzed pieces of facts and data. After that, we had
an activity in class that helped set the groundwork for my essay by looking at the rhetorical
aspects of my sources as well as the literacy of these sources. The assignment also looked at how
my sources related to my own literacy. This was very helpful for me once I got started on my
first draft. When I was done with my first draft, I had a solid three and a half pages to go off of
for peer reviews in class. I knew that I had a strong research base for my essay, but I was not too
sure about the literacy aspect of the paper yet. I let my critique group know this, and they helped
me find places where I could incorporate the literacy aspect into my paper. This helped me

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immensely, and I was so glad that I had such a great group to help strengthen my essay.
Throughout the semester, I was so impressed with just how helpful the peer reviews actually
were to the whole process of this project. The critique groups would always leave an abundance
of comments, and looked at how I could improve each piece in ways that I would have never
even thought of on my own. Plus, the criticism was even strongly constructive. I can definitely
say that the peer reviews helped me greatly each time, and never really hindered my process
from the first question session to the final product.
This inquiry project was great due to the fact that it really helped incorporate and strength
your abilities not only as a researcher, but also as a writer. Yet, this process was not entirely new
to me. I had some experience in writing a paper this way from my English IV class in high
school. Since the teacher was an English major from UNCC, she based the senior-level English
class off of concepts from the UWRT classes at UNCC. When I was in high school, I thought
that the process was just long, tedious and downright boring to go through and complete just to
write one paper. We spent a whole month writing five annotated bibliographies, and two months
just writing the final paper. What I liked about the inquiry project was that all of the pieces for it
were already set, and they were from a range of one to two weeks. This helped me keep focus on
my research and my ideas so that I could continue to build each piece of the project. However,
what I had done for the first time for this project was the concept of conveying my own literacy
into an essay that I believed was going to be mostly research. At first, this was a very strange
concept to me, since I was not used to writing about myself. The literacy memoir was what
assured me that it was possible for me to write about myself and build a very strong piece from
conveying aspects about myself. Looking back, the literacy memoir was a brilliant assignment
that helped me look at writing in a new way. Honestly, I probably would have been lost on the

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final essay if we had to focus on our literacy at that moment and not beforehand with the literacy
memoir.
So, what exactly did I learn this semester? Through the inquiry project, I learned how to
broaden an idea and build a strong essay from questioning and strongly analyzing my sources. I
learned how to effectively use my information to build my own arguments instead of just
absorbing the information to be used as facts and data within my essay. Through the literacy
memoir assignment, I learned how to reflect more on myself than on the writings of others to
build a strong piece. I also learned how to compose a piece of writing that appealed to not only
myself, but also to my audience. Through the discussion posts and class discussions, I learned to
understand that even great writers struggle to create a great piece, and that it is okay to not have a
full grasp on my topic before writing the first draft. I also got a more in-depth look on the writing
process, and how to create arguments from analyzing not just articles, but from stories as well.
Finally, from the UWRT class as a whole, I learned how to get into the college mindset. I learned
that it was time to take my classes more seriously, and that I would have to learn how to manage
my time better. I can definitely say that I did a great job on improving those aspects throughout
the semester. Overall, I can say that this course was an amazing course, and helped me improve
as a student and a writer immensely. I am glad that I could take so many different aspects out of
it as I continue through my college career.