Describe how the work of this class helped you to improve these habits
Essay.
NARRATIVE & ANALYSIS ESSAY:
This essay is both narrative and analysis. It is narrative in that you will be narrating (almost like telling a story in a memoir—the purpose of this narrative is to analyze your progress). Since it’s a narrative, it’s about you and what you did, so you can write in the first person.
But it is also analysis, in that you must go beyond just saying what you did, and instead, analyze how you made that progress, in which areas you excelled, and in which areas you faced challenges.
PART 1: DEVELOPING THE “HABITS OF MIND”
Before you write this essay, please take a look back over all your reflection this quarter—in the blogs, in notes from class (F2F), in annotations at Canvas and Connect. Take stock of the journey before you start writing about it. Then, please take a look at our course objectives (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.—hopefully you’ve looked at these several times this quarter as you’ve been writing your reflections. These are the formal statements of our goals for the class.
For Part 1 of your essay, pay close attention to the last part of the objectives–the “Habits of Mind.” These are the proven habits of successful students (and successful people).
Describe how the work of this class helped you to improve these habits, and take stock on which habits were the hardest for you to develop. Write two snapshots to describe yourself: one for where you were with these habits in week 1, and one for where you are now in week 10.
In order for this part to be analysis and not just narrative, refer to many details from the class and from your experiences in the class – use the details to examine how you made progress with the habits (refer to assignments you completed, texts you read, things you wrote, discussions you had with other students–you can use any of your past blog posts or annotations (at Connect, on Canvas, or wherever you’ve written something reflective about your work). Which activities and experienced helped you develop these habits the most? You should cover all the habits in the list, but you are not required to develop all of them to the same degree—you can focus on a few of the habits that you think are most relevant to your experience in the class.
Your purpose in PART 1 is to show not only where you have succeeded (the habits that you are better at now) but also where you still face challenges (the habits you haven’t come so far along with, or haven’t improved at all). In which habit have you shown the most improvement? In which habit have you shown the least improvement?
PART 2: REACHING COURSE OBJECTIVES
In this part, you’ll describe and analyze your progress toward meeting some of the objectives of the course. When you look at the course objectives (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site., you’ll notice that the first five objectives are highlighted—these are the objectives to focus on for Part 2 of your final reflection essay.
Analyze your progress with the first 5 objectives (the highlighted ones) listed in course objectives (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. Here’s a formula you can use to make sure that you are analyzing your progress (breaking it up and closely evaluating how it happened) and not just narrating it (telling us what you did).
Describe the assignment you were working on and what you did.
Describe what you learned from it, connecting what you learned to one of the objectives.
Show evidence of what you learned by quoting a before/after piece of writing or showing a screenshot of your work, or some other embedded file to show the process of how you learned, and proof of what you learned.
Make sure you follow this 3-step process for each of the 5 objectives that are highlighted.
PART 3: THE FUTURE
You may have entered the class thinking that the only reason for taking it was to get a passing grade and then get out of the class. But hopefully along the way you’ve learned that the real reason for taking a class like 39A is to improve your skills as a communicator. Hopefully the work you did here (and it was hard work, too!)—hopefully this work makes you feel better prepared and more confident about your future classes and your future career.
You won’t always be in a context where what you do—your performance—is for the purpose of a grade. You will soon be in a career where you just need these communication skills—and if you don’t have them, you will suffer.
In Part 3, create a future plan for yourself. What specific things did you learn in 39A that you can take with you into the future? Into your future writing classes? Into other future college classes? Into your career?
Answer preview describe how the work of this class helped you to improve these habits
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