Throughout the semester, the different writing assignments and the discussions held in the classroom have influenced my writing and the way I thought about my writing. My ability to respond to the work of my peers with genuine feedback and receive thoughts and opinions on my own writing from people other than my intended audience has grown over the course of this semester. Furthermore, my ability to integrate an array of different sources into a piece of writing with a single main idea has developed and allowed me to construct more intricate arguments. My writing is certainly nowhere near perfect, and there is always room for improvement, but the assignments and discussions I took part in during FIQWS have improved my abilities as a writer.

Before this course, peer reviews were something I did not see much importance in. However, after the first peer review I received regarding my Narrative Outsiders Essay, I discovered the relevance and importance of it. This peer review gave me insight into how other people view and think of my writing. This is much different than receiving feedback from a teacher, who the assignment is in a way catered to. I imagined the assignment as a “mission” all my classmates and I were given, and a peer review allowed me to see how someone who was given the same prompt and “mission” to go through thinks of my own approach to accomplishing it. Reading the comments on my first peer review was enlightening because it showed me the care to detail and attention my peer reviewer gave my paper. She showed me how valuable it could be to have insight on other people’s view on my writing, and realizing this genuinely improved my overall paper by showing me different lights I could view my writing in. An excerpt from the first peer review I received showed me that my writing is not always perceived in the same way I think of it. For example, “Going from words like porcelain sand to shit really shows the disrespect and otherness that occurs…” is an excerpt from my peer’s review and it showed me a different perspective that people view my writing.

One aspect of writing I did not realize prior to this course is how diverse the background information of a single story can be. Although we embark on the journey of writing a piece with the goal of presenting one argument for a prompt, there are so many different contexts, backgrounds, and narratives that can feed into a singular piece of writing. My research paper had especially shown me the value of incorporating several different resources into a single paper. Using all the resources such as academic journals, narratives, and discussions from the internet has allowed me to diversify my background knowledge when developing my argument. An excerpt from my research paper shows, “For example, colorism is present in postcolonial countries like Kenya and South Africa and is evident by the number of harmful skin lightening practices happening in African countries (Jacobs 552The multiple sources in the works cited demonstrates how the research paper incorporated different perspectives, a diverse array of background information, and allowed me to extend my own knowledge on the topic. Doing this allowed me to strengthen my argument and convey my message in a more impressionable method. Being able to explore further into a topic and comparing different viewpoints with not only my own background knowledge but also my own experiences with the experiences of others. The internet has opened up the ability to explore a plethora of narratives and stories of people I would otherwise not have to access to see. As the semester progressed, I was able to see the importance in learning about the experiences of other people and how it can be incorporated into building my own values and opinions.

Furthermore, another aspect of my writing that has changed is the ability to formulate arguments with much evidence and context aside from the main ideas of the paragraph. Being able to expand at length on a topic and include more evidence than just the claim not only makes my writing stronger, but supplies the audience with more information to formulate their own thoughts and opinions with. Creating a cohesive argument that flows in a logical manner is important for both the reader to understand and for the writer to organize their thoughts within a piece of writing.

Now, looking back, I see how my writing has evolved after experiencing a wide array of assignments and discussions about writing in class. I gained skills such as strengthening my arguments by incorporating a variety of sources and finding use in the insightful nature of a peer review.