Doug Kennedy

Cornerstone MWF 11-11:50

Reflective Essay

5/1/15

Cornerstone has been definitely been my favorite class so far in my academic career at

UNI. I feel like I have improved exponentially as a writer and speaker, because of what this

Cornerstone class has taught me. Due to the fact you are my Cornerstone professor, I feel that

you should definitely listen to my thoughts about this outstanding class that you teach. During

the paper, I will discuss my reflection on my writing skills, public speaking abilities, civility, and

my success as a student.

My attitude towards academic writing is that I feel like I’m forced to write for this class,

and I feel pressure to not plagiarize every time I write. The role it has now is that I have to write

mostly for this class, but I also need to write for scholarships and applications for future

opportunities and rewards. In the future, as you mentioned in class, I need to practice my

writing for classes that I will be taking later in my academic career. Also, when I have an

accounting position, I will be needing to write to my boss and supervisors to explain what some

of the accounting results mean to them.

I have a few writing strategies I will elaborate on. I usually end up writing my papers and

other assignments towards the due date, because of organizational activities and I have other

important assignments and tests for other classes to work on. My process has changed

somewhat throughout the year, because originally, I just started writing without really knowing

what I was going to say, but now I have been outlining or even writing my answers on paper to

know what I’m going to write. I didn’t on this assignment, because it’s more reflective and it’s

laid out pretty well on to what to write.

My weaknesses are that I don’t really explain well. I can be vague, because I don’t write

in detail. Another thing is that as you know, I stress too much about accidentally plagiarizing. I

improved on the vagueness during my standardizing multi-section courses paper. I tried to be

specific on my examples with my Business Statistics and Microeconomics classes within the

paper. When it came to worrying about plagiarism, I feel like I improved with my very last

campus engagement. I didn’t use any, or a very small amount, of quotation marks. I needed to

do that, so I feel like I improve with that.

My strengths for writing are my willingness to go beyond the minimum pages, and

following the APA style very well. As you know, I have turned in many papers that were beyond

the minimum pages, and some even over the maximum. For the following APA style, I usually

do a good job with incorporating those required items such as in-text citations and a title page.

My best writing was with the scholarship essays. I felt like I did a good job connecting

my experiences with to the topics of adversity and choosing my major. This was better than my

others, because I feel like I wasn’t be forced to write those, and I actually enjoying writing

about it. I

I feel like I don’t mind public speaking, and it’s much better than writing for me. The role

it has now is to do speeches in Cornerstone, and I feel like I became less timid asking questions

in some classes, especially this one. In the future, I will have to give presentations in higher

level classes for research, and during my accounting job, I will have to speak in front of my

accounting department and my supervisors and boss. I spend a lot of time working on

speeches, especially the night before. Also, my process has become more cautious, in that I

focus more on the content than on practicing my speech, due to lack of time. I will improve this

my sophomore year, because I know I can improve with that.

My weaknesses as a speaker are that I look down my notecards way too much, and I

should practice way more on my speeches. The reasons why I stare at my notecards so much, is

because I want to make I’m getting the source right and I want to say the correct information. I

need to practice more, because for the latest speech, I practiced it once at 1:30 AM, because I

didn’t prepare as well as I thought I did. For both of those, I felt like I had good eye contact

sometimes during my last speech, but I practiced way more last semester when I had more

available time.

My strengths as a speaker are that I am mostly comfortable in front of people, and I am

considered to be well-dressed for speeches. I have been told many times that I am very social,

which I find it beneficial for speeches. This had made me less afraid of speaking, because I do

that frequently anyways. I worked on that strength by doing more speeches from the

StrengthQuest, Group Project, and the Multi-Section courses speech that happened throughout

the semester. Another strength is that people say that they like how I dress. As the saying goes,

“Look good, feel good, play good”, so when I’m dressed well, especially for the last speech, and

people compliment me on it, I feel appreciative, which makes me more confident with my outfit

and speech. This has applied for all or most of my speeches throughout the semester and year.

My best speech was probably my StrengthQuest speech, because I felt like I was able to

connect my strengths to my great Christmas Show experience very easily, and I enjoyed talking

and even thinking about it now. Fellow classmate, and Glee Club member, Blake, seemed to like

it too. I believe I did pretty well grade wise on it, but I just enjoyed talking about it the most

compared to my other subjects.

Going into the school year, I heard of the word civility, but I didn’t know what it actually

meant. The one activity that applied civility the best was with the volunteering experiences for

the civility paper. My definition of civility is to expect to do something positive to make

someone’s day. The volunteer experiences I got to participate in allowed me to do that for

many different people. This applied to both of the semesters, because I had to write a paper in

each semester. I had the opportunities to make meals for families during Thanksgiving time and

play games and make ornaments with the elderly at a nursing home last semester. This

semester, I got to play basketball with the “Waterloo Boys and Girls Club” kids, and later I got to

interact with some people at the “Make a Wish: Walk for Wishes” fundraiser. All of these

opportunities allowed me to find out what civility is for myself and try to actually make people’s

day.

I learned to work on my assignments on a more regular basis compared to scrambling at

the end to complete it. For the projects and papers in this class, it was good to have frequent

deadlines so I could work a little bit at time on those instead of having an “all-nighter” and that

would result in terrible work. I have applied this too my other classes especially in my toughest

ones such as Business Statistics, Microeconomics, and Humanities. I actually feel like I did,

because I knew I had to get the projects and papers done, so I couldn’t just blow it off until

later. I feel like I learned how to become a college student, because of this class, and it truly has

helped me a lot this year. Whether that was learning how to write correctly, learning about the

library resources, or even just talking to you or Emma has really helped me out.

This semester, I would give myself an A. I have worked extremely hard this semester to

complete the required papers, projects, and assignments, and probably put way too much

effort into it. I spent a lot of time revising my papers, and I especially for the last project, it was

very tiring to do all of the research for it. I know that I have talked with you about many

different things within Cornerstone, so I think that shows how much I care about getting a good

grade within this class. Within the Group Project, I wish I was more vocal, but I did provide good

information without our conversations that our group had. Within the class, I feel like I became

more open as the year went on. I wasn’t too close with any of my Cornerstone classmates last

semester, but I have made a much better in getting closer with them, and it has definitely

worked. I feel like I have become close friends with many Cornerstone classmates this

semester, because we hang out after class for lunch, connected more on Facebook and Twitter,

and I enjoy getting in conversations with them. My effort has also improved academically in

Cornerstone this semester compared to the last. As stated earlier, I have put so much more

time into Cornerstone, and I feel like I am trying way more too. Last semester, I was more

relaxed about my work, and didn’t read over my work for errors. This semester, I have been

doing that for most or all of my assignments, which allows to do better on the work.

In my paper, I talked about my writing skills, public speaking abilities, civility, and my

success as a student. I feel as if my writing and speaking has improved exponentially, because of

what you have taught me in your Cornerstone class. Please continue to teach Cornerstone at

UNI, because you have truly have made a great difference to me and so many others. Thank

you so much for making this my favorite class, and allowing me to become very close with my

fellow Cornerstone classmates!