My name is Hefza Afreen Aslam. I am a freshman at City College of New York.  In my first semester as an undergraduate, this semester I was able to acquire knowledge in writing. I was able to write a conference proposal, conference paper, publication research, journal manuscript, peer reviews, and blog posts. All of these pieces of writing have helped me improve. I have improved while writing each of these assignments.       

When I first wrote my conference proposal, I was honestly clueless. The transition from high school to college was new and this material was new to me.  This class, however, helped me with writing a conference proposal. I learned that although I had several points I wanted to share I had to choose one that could potentially be an interesting topic. Later, I could have turned that into a research problem. Another thing I was able to achieve in this class was being able to write a conference paper. In high school that is something, I was not able to explore. Writing a conference paper, helped me learn to have a more specific question. At first, I would have a question that was either general or rhetorical. Publication research exposed me to different undergraduate academic journals and gave me practice analyzing published articles. Writing a Journal manuscript has helped me reflect the significance of the research further than the conference paper. Peer reviews have also played a role in helping me with my writing. Analyzing and critiquing other papers, refrain you from making similar mistakes and also perhaps learning from their writing. Peer reviews also help you write a better paper. For instance,  in my paper, I mentioned a film but did not go into detail of how it related to what I was saying. From the comments I got in the peer review I was able to edit my paper and make any corrections. Lastly, blog posts have helped me not only in writing but also in being informed about matters, I do not normally look into. Blog posts are an informal way to think about writing. Other students and I were able to read articles, journals, or any piece of literature that stood out to us which helped us write on issues, and merely reflections on what we read.                         Mr. Druffel has helped us with our writings through assignments and giving us feedback on our work. The conference proposal paper was an introduction to an important genre of the conference paper. The conference paper itself helped me answer the question I asked and then present it in a report that will effectively communicate my ideas to other scholars. Conference proposals are significant because they help you develop writing talking points for a presentation which is a transferable skill. Throughout this course, I was able to acquire new skills as mentioned, I was able to strengthen my weakness and find out what they were.  In this course, Mr. Druffel really helped us and I encourage other students to do these assignments because they really help contribute your writing.