Final reflection
At the beginning of the semester I was a little intimidated by the class. Right off the bat I thought everyone had more experience than me as a writer. My goal was to learn and become a better writer. I think I accomplished this. I was able to learn more about myself as a writer. What I struggle with and what I’m good at. I struggle with grammar, but I have learned new ways to help correct this. One way is reading things out loud multiple times to make sure things make sense. Also, not being afraid to have someone read for mistakes. At the beginning, I was scared of criticism. Now I realize that criticism can help a lot. I learned that if you need help you should just ask for it. I wish I would have asked for help earlier in the class. I found that the only way to get better at writing is to do it over and over again. That you won’t just get better at it overnight. It will take practice. One thing I found I was good at in writing was coming up with ideas. I have no problem going up to someone and having a conversation. I think this really helped me in this class. I really enjoyed talking to people I didn’t know and then creating an idea for a story. I think as the semester progressed I was able to create better questions. This made it easier to write. It gave the person I interviewed more to think and talk about. I was able to get more out of interviews this way. Most of my interviews were in person luckily. The one I had over the phone I found to be more difficult. When I was able to talk to people in person the conversation flowed better. I think covid definlety affected how I learned in this class. I’m a very hands on learner. It was harder to learn things over zoom. I think this class would have been better in person. Being able to talk and work with people more on my stories and writing. Even though Covid wasn’t ideal for this semester I think it gave me a different perspective on writing. Covid came up in every story I wrote. It also affected me personally over the semester being in quarantine over three times. It gave us as a class a different set of challenges that in a normal semester we would not have faced. Which I believe improved our skill in a different way. As a writer I think my goal is to keep writing and getting better. One thing I need to focus on is not to be embarrassed by criticism and use it to make me better as a writer. This overall semester has been a rollercoaster, but I was able to learn a lot about myself as a writer. The class taught me a lot and is a class that I think will help me a ton in the future.
Not published
The story was about the first balck lives matter protest at UMD. I think I could have got another interview to make this story stronger. I think it would have benefited from more quotes. I really enjoyed the topic of this story and l felt it was a very relevant story for the times.
Article 2
Not published
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JKuUjbDTfEY65av7WM8xs9iFE8wZVcZMVaYmBYWvA_4/edit?usp=sharing
This story I wrote about the men’s basketball coach at UMD getting all of UMD athletics registered to vote. I really liked interviewing for this story. I think this story could have been better if I would have been able to get more statistics about the election itself.
Article 3
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VPa_5bTOa4w9qVlqmKpxxF8esRiE6Aykqza-j81eWSI/edit?usp=sharing
not published
I wrote this story about the Salvation Army in Duluth. I think I was able to correct this story and make it better. I really enjoyed the narrative piece once I understood how to write it correctly. I think it ended up really making the story better.
