Writing is something I have always had an interesting relationship with. On one hand I love writing in an informal setting regarding topics that I enjoy. In situations like this I can go on and on, the words naturally flowing from my mind to the medium on which I am communicating. On the other hand, writing in a setting such as school, in which my writing is judged and graded causes me to lock up and not be able to get anything down. Over the past several weeks in English 101 I feel as though I have developed more confidence in my work in such a setting through better understanding writing expectations and nuances.

A field in which I feel I have always struggled as a writer is in paragraph structure and flow. They are things that consistently trip me up as I am writing and break my flow as I worry about the very nature of that which I am writing in regards to how well it will be received. Structure of paragraphs I feel is something I will need to continue to work on but in regards to flow I feel as though this class has allowed me to improve greatly through things like Project 1.

It may seem obvious, but as a writer I always feel most at ease writing about things with which I hold experience. It enables my preferred method of writing – that being flow of conscious and lets me not worry too much about whether or not the product is “good enough.” This has not changed much in this class as the subject of my group work was stress, something I am all too familiar with. Something that this class has opened me up to, to a degree is the use of sources. I used to look at sources as just something I had to add to claims I was making in order to back them up but I have gained a new perspective on them as primarily sources of information with which to form opinions and claims. I am personally quite proud of the work I have done this quarter regarding collection and usage of scholarly sources such as journal articles and research findings as someone who has never been too keen on that kind of thing.

In the future I hope to be able to apply the things I have taken from this class, primarily in the fields of paragraph flow/connection and use of/finding of sources to inform papers I write. I am glad to have been able to come into this class with next to no expectations and come out pleasantly surprised with what I was able to get out of the experience.

Over the course of the projects in this class my partner and I have been researching the effects of stress, particularly as it pertains to ability to perform in settings of work. Our webtext seeks to inform the prospective reader of our findings and educate them as to how they can use the information in their lives. It can be found here: https://wp.wwu.edu/mgosresearchweb/