Matt Brauckmann
Foundations of Writing
May 10th, 2013
Reflection Essay
Coming into Foundations of College Writing I only had one thing in mind, and that was the fact
that this class would just a waste of my time, and that I would struggle to find the motivation to write
these papers. I have always been a good writer and the only thing I constantly struggled with was
preparation and organizing myself in a timely manner. This class changed the way I viewed many things
about writing, and even though I knew I had pretty good writing habits, it further improved those habits
and made me an even better writer.
The first assignment I came across in this class was the Personal Photo Essay. This project very
quickly taught me to do something I had never believed worked, and that was to brainstorm. When we
were given this assignment I immediately told myself that I was going to write about my high school
graduation. It seemed to be a good thing to talk about, I had pictures, it had happened recently, and it
was something that a lot of people could relate to. As we were told to brainstorm our ideas and write
them down on a piece of paper, I quickly realized that this would not be the best thing to write about in
this paper. Although graduation was a good time, when I wrote it out on paper, there really was that
much information I was passionate about and it wasn’t a topic where I was going to be able to convey
information to my reader very well.
This was a huge step for me in improving my writing skills. All throughout high school I had
always just used the first idea that popped into my head, because I figured if it was the first thing that
came up, it was obviously the one I would be most passionate about. This first paper taught me a crucial
part of the writing process, and that was brainstorming and writing out ideas on paper. Not only did it
give me more ideas to choose from, but it made writing more fun. In this paper, I found the ability to
describe an event I absolutely loved. I got to describe it in detail, and convey that emotion to the
reader. I also got to use my own photos to show what an amazing experience it was. This was a huge
improvement for me, and has changed how I have prepared myself for papers, and it has helped
immensely. This paper really drove home the concepts of the writing process right off the bat, but
more than anything else, brainstorming became one of the most important aspects of writing to me.
The Photo Essay also showed me how to implement photos into an essay to enhance the
reader’s experience. Since I had chosen a massive sporting event for my paper, it was important that
the reader saw the picture of the whole stadium, with the American Flag, and all 46,000 people looking
down. It helped me to convey the emotion and allowed me to match up the wording in my paper to the
pictures beside it. The other pictures I used in the essay also allowed me to show how close I was to
these athletes and how down to earth they really were. The photos really added to the emotion needed
to make the reader feel how important the event was to the author.
The second writing assignment we had improved my writing skills even further. This project
involved writing a review about anything of our choice. It could have been a movie, a restaurant, a play,
really anything that we wanted to evaluate. I started out this assignment by using what I had previously
learned and brainstorming for a few days. I picked a movie that I had recently seen, so it would be fresh
in my mind. This led me on to another important thing I learned about writing and that was how to
tailor your paper to a certain audience. My first glimpse of this was the review of Pirates of the
Caribbean that we read in the textbook. This quickly taught me how not to write a review. It was
merely a review rather than just making fun of the movie. The second review we read was a New York
Times review on Guy Fieri’s restaurant in Times Square. This also gave me ideas of what not to do in a
paper. This review seemed like it was merely out to find things that were wrong with the restaurant
rather than evaluate it in a respectable manner. The restaurant review showed me that if you are trying
to write to someone who hates Guy Fieri then it was good, but to the common audience, it was not a
fair evaluation, rather just someone trying to find almost anything wrong that they could find wrong.
This goes for the Pirates of the Caribbean review as well. If the author was trying to reach out to people
who hate pirate movies, then he greatly succeeded. However, if he was trying to reach out to people
who had no idea about the movie at all, then he probably just sounded like an idiot who was rambling
on about how much he hated the genre. So these two things taught me that I needed to tailor my paper
to an audience that would be on the fence about spending that $13 to go see the movie or not. I
wouldn’t be writing it to someone who hated war movies, or someone who already loved action movies.
Another important thing that this review paper would go on to teach me was how to support
my arguments about my views on the movie. It is very easy to just go out and say “I hate this movie” or
“I absolutely love this movie”, but supporting your argument will give you credibility. I have always
done this in my papers, but the review taught me how to improve this. Supporting my argument
doesn’t just mean that I throw in a quote or mention a scene from the movie. It meant that I needed to
throw in a quote, and then go on to explain why I thought this was so important to the movie, or explain
why I thought that it was crucial piece to the storyline to the movie. This will show the reader that you
are not just picking out random scenes that you liked, but it will give the reader a distinct reason as to
why they should listen and value your opinion on something. This vastly elevated my writing skills for
this paper and papers in the future. It taught me how to expand on my ideas, and what I needed to do
to support my arguments in a way that other people would value my opinions.
The final paper we did which was the ethnographic research project really opened my eyes to
the different ways people communicate or act. I was stuck for awhile in the brainstorming phase of
this project. I would think of a certain group of people, but then I questioned myself on who I would
interview or how much information I could actually get out of them. I finally came to the realization that
pilots would be a great group of people to do. Not only do I have two pilots in my family, but pilots have
such unique forms of communication that it would be perfect. Communication and language is also the
centerpiece for the things pilots do.
As soon as I started my research for this project, I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to find
what I was looking for in any scholarly article or on any “.edu” website. The most useful pieces of
information I found were on airliners.net (an aviation forum online for pilots) and through listening in on
air traffic control communications. This gave me an unfiltered, unbiased look into what pilots say and
do, and the language they really use. It taught me to really think outside of the box and to dig deeper
for the information I needed to complete this paper.
The second thing this taught me was that not everyone uses the same language, and there are
many reasons for this. It wouldn’t be ideal for a pilot to use the everyday language we do in the context
they work in. It could lead to miscommunication and accidents that could cause harm to people.
Instead they have created their own distinct language that can be applied to the environment that they
work in, allowing them to communicate effectively and clearly.
After all is said and done, Foundations of College Writing did not completely retool the views I
had on writing papers. Instead, it allowed me to improve on the writing skills I already had. It allowed
me to see that I was a much better writer than I had ever thought I was. I expanded on many ideas and
allowed myself the time to brainstorm. Another very crucial thing that I took from this class was
proofreading. Having someone else read your own work allows you to get a different perspective. It
gives you insight, especially for something like a review, into how credible your work is, and how well
you back up your opinions.
I really plan to continue using all of the tools I learned in this class throughout my college years.
My major requires a lot of writing, whether it is essays or research papers, so I will take what I learned
and use it to my advantage. I enjoy writing now more than I did before, because I’ve realized and
learned to convey how much something means to me through words and photos. I’ve also vastly
improved how to tailor my paper to a specific audience. This is a crucial part of my future in writing.
Each paper I write will be written to a different audience, and to have the ability to know who you are
writing to is something that will be very valuable in the future.
Being in this class for a full semester and going through the writing process on four papers now
allowed me to see who I am as a writer. The most important thing I took from the whole thing is that
there is no perfect writer. I even saw in reading the New York Times review or the review in the
textbook that each reader will interpret and read something differently than someone else. That is
something that will never change as long as there are people to write essays and articles. So instead of
trying to be a perfect writer, it is more important to just try and improve the way you write and learn
new things along the way, and that is the most important concept I took out of this whole class.