As a mid-year reflection for this course, you will write a reflective letter and post five pieces of work accompanied by a Vonnegut-flavored self-evaluation to your online portfolio. What five pieces best reflect you as a writer?

 

Getting Started:

Begin your letter with “Dear Reader.” This letter should be 500-1000 words long and should discuss what you have learned this semester. You can approach this reflection any way you would like, but here are some ideas to guide you:

1. Look back at how you described yourself as a writer and consider how you have changed since August?

2. Look back at how you described yourself as a reader and a thinker and consider how or if that has shifted since August.

3. Have you shifted in your skill or comfort level as a public speaker? a reader? a writer?

4. What were your goals for this semester? Did you accomplish them? Be specific.

5. What are you most proud of this semester? Why?

6. How did your writing, reading, and thinking habits deepen over  the semester?

7. Where do you still need to grow as a writer? Reader? What do you need from the class or from me to get there?

 

Evaluating Your Work:

• Begin by reading the assignment the Kurt Vonnegut used with his students. Then apply Vonnegut’s task to evaluating your own work.

• Select 5 things you’ve produced this semester and evaluate each of them. Be your own critic and be honest! Start by looking back at the standards for each unit.

 

Consider:

What makes you like one piece and not the other? What does each piece contribute to your understanding of the writer’s strengths, weaknesses, growth, development, preoccupations, style, tone, voice? If you were to read yourself from the perspective of a particular school of literary criticism, would you notice anything interesting? Trends? Aberrations? Where have there been shifts and changes?