What I am taking away

Going into this writing class I really had taken some good English classes throughout my career as a student but most of my classes only focused on grammar and making sure my sentences were configured in a way to portray great writing skills. Although that stuff is important I have learned that it is not all there is to writing and English especially. So going into this class I had no idea even what synthesizing a document was all about not to mention knowing how to actually do it. But when Mrs. Bowles assigned the two articles by Laperriere and McCracken I decided to really investigate and figure out this whole synthesizing thing. First a looked up synthesis because I thought I knew what it was but I wanted to be sure. When I looked it up my dictionary said that a synthesis is a result of combination, a new unified whole of various components. Well that is what I had thought of it as but it put it in better terms than I ever could have, I never thought of summarizing which is basically what it is as a new unified whole of various information. So I had a new hold on what I was doing. While reading through these articles it really helped when I used the hints that Mrs. Bowles instructed, such as relating things back to our own lives and making connections, and summarizing as I go in sections so that it would make more sense along the way.