Nick Stroupe

Professor Connie Douglas

UWRT 1101
5 December 2014
Final Reflection
Before coming to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, I had very little
experience of the writing process. I learned quickly that college level writing was nothing
like what I was used to and I had to find motivation from within to improve these writing
skills. During the time spent in University Writing 1101, I have encountered a large
learning curve and enjoyed every minute of it. I look forward to the continuation of these
skills and putting them to work in the engineering field. The steps I have taken to
becoming a better writer and the process of which I took are shown within my portfolio. I
included works from which I was still bewildered to where I stand now.
Within the portfolio, I have chosen multiple different types of daybook entries.
The reason for choosing these entries is to clearly show how my writing has progressed.
When initially opening the Daybook tab, one will first see the Barbie entry. This entry
was the final writing piece that was written in my book and is arguably my best effort.
After scrolling to the bottom of the page, you will see the Literacy Questions entry.
This may seem like a great amount of writing at first but it actually is one of the worst
pieces of work within this tab. I personally chose not to revise this work in order to
clearly show how far my writing has come. I now take the art more seriously and do all
work with excessive vigor.

I personally think that the Oral History is the most important work within the
portfolio. I placed the most effort into this piece and spent the most time revising this
work. I believe that it is the most important due to the fact that it covers a research aspect
as well as a creative portion. The research comes from the interview portion where I
talked with a professional racer, Anthony Sanders. I used this as an opportunity to learn
about the profession and what it will take to possibly become a racecar driver. The
creative aspect of the essay comes from the initial planning of the work. We had the
freedom to interview anyone of our desire and explore his or her life.
Strengths in my writing are very few but the weaknesses can be found very
quickly. I believe that I have the ability to pick out my weaknesses because I have the
habit of comparing myself to peers within the classroom. This habit can be found helpful
to some people but I sometimes find it discouraging. I personally do not think that I am a
bad writer but when comparing, I see that there is plenty of room for improvement. The
main struggle for me is repeating words throughout my essay. I worked on this issue
during the course but could never seem to shake it. Other than this mistake, I sometimes
find myself writing multiple fragmented sentences. Every time I received a paper back,
there was at least one of these issues contained. My strengths of writing can be shown
within my Oral History. The most prominent strength would be the ability to create a
great introduction. The effect of this is the inability to continue the greatness throughout
the paper. Even though this is true, I have progressed exponentially this semester and am
appreciative of the knowledge I have gained.
I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in this course and will continue to build on my
skills as well as I will never forget the amount of progress I made during my first

semester in college. I personally never expected my writing course to be this difficult but
in order to be great, hard work must be executed. I would have never placed this much
effort into the class if it were not for my professor continuously pushing my classmates
and I to do great things. I have learned a lot, and I will value this opportunity forever.