To: Crystal Rodwell

From: Atiqa Chowdhury 

Date: Tuesday, February 22 2022

I choose my Secret History copy for this assignment because I had just spent a month getting through the novel. The reading experience was fresh on my mind. My goal was to convince students not to purchase the mass market copy of this book. Because my audience was students like me, I felt no need to use fancy language, especially considering the product review genre. It forced me to hone specifically into my argument.

With the product review assignment, I learned how to collaborate with others in my writing. In the peer-review process, I gave specific feedback to people in my group like instead of ‘too general’ I included which part should be explained. I acknowledged that my writing style is not the only one. This forced me to be aware of all my comments’ impact on the essay (i.e does this comment make sense). I made sure to ask what specific things peers needed my help on to maximize my time.

With this, I was forced to grapple with my bad self-assessment skills. I wrote my draft in one day, and it made me enter peer reviews blind to my own structural mistakes. I did not give my editors a specific thing to focus on because I believed I was done with my assignment. Although I implemented everyone’s comments on clear topic sentences that included language from my thesis, I used no transitional sentence at the end of each paragraph. I believe I might’ve shortened my essay to where it became a jumble of arguments with a clear point, but no cohesive interaction. 

Another thing I noticed in this assignment is my inability to differentiate between editing and revising. This made me use my time insufficiently, as I was doing more editing than revision which, I needed more time on. For my edits, I made sure to delete unnecessary phrases and add periods to run-on sentences. I was constantly reading my essay to see what was hindering my argument. Paragraph structure was a struggle for me in this assignment, and I wish I would have known this before coming into peer editing day so I could’ve asked my classmates for help with it. 

My overconfidence made me unaware of my writing goals for this assignment, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to show in my paper specifically until the last draft. Without a clear vision process, my argument wasn’t clear to me. It was daunting to go through re-writing in a time crunch. It would have been easier for me if I was aware of my problems earlier. 

For future assignments, I will be sure to span my draft writing over multiple days to decrease the likeliness of me being blind to my mistakes. I want to be able to revise and edit my work before the peer edits, so I have a clear concept of my argument. With a better revision process, I can continue to read my work aloud to include transitional phrases.