The start of this semester was not as I expected but it is all due to these times of uncertainty. It was challenging, but this semester has officially come to an end. Throughout this course over this semester, I have shown a major improvement. Not fully but that is because this is only the beginning and there’s more to learn in every other course that I will be taking in the future. Psychopathology and literature showed me a different side of literature and writing. When writing, something to keep in mind, is interpretation. As a writer we have our own way of expressing the significant details and argument. However, the reader can have a different interpretation. In this course we all were able to have discussions where we would reflect on one another’s work when coming up with a topic proposal for each assignment listed in my portfolio. This is where revision also occurred and it is something that I achieved at a greater extent compared to past papers that I have done where I had to revise my own and a partners. I have learned that revising is not just looking at grammatical errors and misspelled words, but if what is being written covers the topic or supports an argument being made. There is more to writing, but like said before interpretation plays a big role. That is why some pieces of literature are successful at explaining a topic or proving a point, but it can also be unsuccessful. The use of rhetorical and literary elements, such as tone, theme, voice, POV and setting, are elements that should be taken into consideration as well. This course gave me a much more better understanding of these elements and it is what makes the writing more understanding for the audience. When completing my personal narrative, tone and the use of voice was important. Since it was a personal experience, the use of voice can grab the audience’s attention so they can know how I felt as I was writing this personal narrative. Being able to notice the voice and tone in writing helps put an emphasis on the overall topic. Overall, I understand these elements but there’s times that I believe it will be hard to implement them in my writing. I believe this is mainly used for personal writings, but like I said there is more to learn so I can be wrong.

Aside from the elements, the sources us students had to use for all our assignments were important as well. Something that I have done consistently was paraphrasing and it is something I found beneficial because I was able to introduce a piece of evidence in different words rather than copying the quote, even though that can be done if put in quotations. The overall use of sources is to make the writing reliable. When looking at supportive sources I have learned and extremely improved on analyzation. It has helped breakdown articles in order to understand the overall message the article is sending. Thererfore, it can help picking out useful sources. I can say that after taking this course summarizing and analyzing has become two of my strengths. There is times where an article has to be summarized and times where it just has to be analyzed, in order to focus on the literary elements expressed.

My overall perception of writing has extremely changed due to this course. It was a lot to take in, but it is what helped better my assignments compared to the past. I didn’t achieve all objectives to a great extent, but instead to a moderate extent.