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Will Misenheimer

UWRT-1101

Professor Arnold

8 December 2015

Final Reflection

As a high school student, it seemed that every piece of writing that I wrote was the same. The

content was different, of course, but the formatting was almost entirely the same. Everything was

prescriptive and required little application of thought and open-mindedness. I can recall the typical format

of the high school thesis statement, which read something like, “Will wrote his Ethnography Report

because he wanted to introduce the behaviors of sports fans, it greatly aided in the self-realization of his

writer’s voice, and his grade was heavily dependent on the completion of the project, followed by three

body paragraphs, with each of the three subtopics listed in the thesis as a primary point of discussion in

each paragraph, followed by a conclusion. I felt that while this method may be effective in emphasizing

the critical components of a piece of writing, it drains the work of a significant amount of creativity. As I

have grown more comfortable at UNC Charlotte, I feel that my writing has, as well. I feel that my writing

has made wonderful strides in light of the opportunities I have had to write non-prescriptively. I would

not argue that I have went from nothing to being Ernest Hemingway, but I have become much more

aware of my writer’s voice and created much more insightful works as a result of the self-expression and

open-minded thoughts that are encouraged by the independent nature of each of the writing assignments.

The realizations that I have made in my writing career this year may be best depicted by the

words of Frank Zappa, “A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.” Just under six

months ago, I had graduated from a school and environment in which prescriptive writing was the norm. I

was a butterfly waiting to emerge from the cocoon. Through the assignments of works such as the

Literacy Narrative, Found Genres Assignment, Altered-Book Narrative, and Ethnography Report, I have

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been introduced to the abundance of new ideas and efficient means of communicating them through fluid

and developed writing.

While the Literacy Narrative introduced and emphasized the effective means of expressing

literacy, the process begins much earlier. As shown in the Ethnography Report, before expressing

literacy, one must first become literate and obtain a desire to express this newfound literacy to others.

Through the practices of the Ethnography Report, I became literate in a culture that I felt I wasn’t literate

in, and expressed the process of obtaining literacy through the writing of the report. I learned that before I

was to write, I must have something to write about and a desire to see that it reaches the minds of others.

Just as our minds are parachutes, we must keep them open..

Literacy may be displayed in multiple ways