Reflecting on the three major projects I completed in this course, I can see that each of them challenged me to think about writing in a new way. In the beginning of the semester, my sense of “good writing” was mostly about clear sentences and correct grammar. By the end of the course, I think of it much more in terms of genre awareness, an adaptable composing process, and rhetorical choices that are deliberate and purposeful for a given audience. Each of the three projects required different kinds of thought and work, but together they moved me from a focus on simply finishing assignments to making strategic decisions as a writer.

One of the major changes for me was in understanding how to attend to genres. Each major project required a different genre with different conventions and expectations. The investigative research essay on CRISPR, for example, asked me to write as an academic researcher. I had to synthesize sources, ask specific research questions, and find the right balance between explanation and analysis. Other projects had me write in more public-facing or reflective genres, where the tone was more personal and the structure was more loose. Switching between genres made me realize that there is no single “correct” way to write; instead, I learned to ask questions like: Who is my audience? What do they already know? What does this genre usually look like, and how can I meet or slightly subvert those expectations?

My composing process also evolved a lot over the course of the semester. In the beginning, I was very much a draft-as-you-go kind of writer who would only fix things at the sentence level. By the time I wrote my CRISPR essay, I was depending more on outlining, research notes, and multiple drafts. If I look at the artifacts in my portfolio, such as my first outline or my source annotations, I can see how I now use prewriting as a legitimate part of my process, rather than just something I need to rush through at the beginning. Creating an outline for the CRISPR project helped me understand the overall structure of the paper: when to include background on the science of CRISPR, when to focus on medical applications, when to dig into the ethics and policy aspects.

I also learned the difference between global revision and simple editing. In many of my previous classes, my “revision” usually meant catching grammar mistakes or rewording awkward sentences. In this course, I had to be willing to move sections around, cut repetitive background info, and even add whole new paragraphs to make my argument clearer. For the CRISPR essay, I moved entire chunks of the paper around so that the paper followed a more logical pattern: first I explain what CRISPR is, then I show what it can do in medicine, then I go into the risks and ethical concerns. Restructuring a paper that way felt like a really weird violation at first, but it made the final version so much stronger. I also learned that revision is more than making surface-level changes; it’s about rethinking your ideas.

I also became much more intentional about using rhetorical strategies. Terms like ethos, logos, and pathos were no longer just vocabulary words I had to memorize: I learned to recognize and apply them in my own writing. For example, in the CRISPR paper, I used peer-reviewed scientific studies and policy reports as evidence to build ethos and logos, so that my claims were clearly supported by credible research. At the same time, I tried to connect with readers by raising ethical questions and implications for real-world policy, which added elements of pathos. In different projects throughout the course, I practiced varying my tone and how much I assume the audience knows depending on whether I am writing for an academic audience, a public audience, or my classmates and instructor.

Finally, this course helped me see how these skills would transfer to other classes, and how they are skills I will actually use after college. I will have to write for different audiences in other classes, in my future major, and in my future career: professors, coworkers, clients, or the general public. I can use my understanding of how to analyze a genre, plan and revise a writing project at a global level, and make deliberate rhetorical choices to help me in all those different contexts. Completing the three major projects, and then returning to them again for this portfolio, showed me that I am capable of approaching complex topics, managing multiple sources, and shaping my writing for a specific situation. Overall, I am leaving this course with a stronger sense of myself as a writer and a clearer understanding that writing is a flexible, ongoing process rather than a one-time task.