Exploratory Essay Summary & Response Revision Critical Research Paper Research Reflection

S&R Reflection

Self Assessment on my Writing Journey:

This self assessment will be based mostly on my growth and how each piece of writing has made me grow into the college writer that I am now. I still have certain areas that I need to work on, but as time goes by I will achieve my goal and be where I want to be when it comes to the style and technique of my writing.

First day of class: 

The first day of class, I was confident with my writing because in high school I would get good grades on them or grades that I was satisfied with. As my teacher was explaining the requirements for her class, the only thing that I kept thinking about was if I am good enough to be in college and get good grades in this writing class. Even though I did get good grades in high school, I know that college has a higher expectations when you write and strict rules on essays as well.

Summary & Response: 

The journey of writing my summary & response is what really showed me what it is that is required of me when I write a college paper. The first time I handed it in, my teacher told me to do it over because when I write I tend to write as if someone is in my head and it doesn’t come out clearly. The challenge for me were to catch my own mistakes and trying to fully explain what I am thinking because it is difficult for me to put it on paper of the ideas that I am thinking about. However, when I talk about what I want to write about it makes more sense than if I type it into an essay. In my revision, I had to make sure that what I was writing fully made sense to the reader and not only to myself. The revision took me a while to do because at that particular time, I was first learning what a college essay has to have and I had to figure out my own way of getting that across. In my revision I did get a grade that I was proud of because it does show an improvement, but at the same time I know I am capable of more.

Exploratory Essay:

In my exploratory essay, I wrote about my interpretation of the story Eight Bites. To get the full idea of the story I had to re-read the story multiple times and annotate certain parts of the story for a reminder of my ideas that came from a particular quote. Normally, in high school I write essays based on what my teachers tells me to, but what intrigued me about a college essay was that even though we had to write about a topic the professor assigned to us, we can still write about our own thinking because not everyone thinks the same and there is freedom and finding out who you are can also be tied into this as well. It will teach you what you need to work on what you love, instead of writing on something that didn’t catch the eye of the writer. When I wrote this essay and received it back, there was a significant amount of improvement towards my essays from the beginning of the semester until now and in this particular essay I wanted to prove that my audience will understand, that I know the concept of Freud as well as the story, but also my understanding of it all together.

Critical Research Essay: 

The critical research paper has to be the most challenging paper I have written because I never had to write a 5-7 page assignment on my analysis based of a text. The structure of writing a 2 page paper has made me get straight to the point on what I have to stay and at the same time use evidence. In this case, I had to build up to my main idea instead of going straight into my topic causing the process on writing a 5-7 pages not be a stressful to reach the word count and/or page limit. Although, I had to be extremely cautious on making sure that I stay in the lane of my topic essay and not wander off to talk about something that is not related to my analysis. This essay does show how far I have came as a writer, all the improvements that I’ve accomplished, as well as writing my thoughts in a clear manner so that my reader could understand my analysis. Also, it reveals what I still have to improve on and the benefits of using an outline to help you structure your essay. I was given an outline by one of my teachers and it has helped me a lot in figuring out what I wanted to say and when.

Self Reflection:
After each essay we are required to write a reflection based on genre, audience, stance, purpose, and also the reason why you chose the topics you wrote about. In my reflections I have noticed a pattern on my improvement on how I would describe my writing. My first reflection, I told my reader that I was so stressed because I wanted to make sure that my audience knew what I was talking about and they would be able to get an A+ on their paper from my topic just by reading my essay. That is what I wanted to accomplish in all of my essays, to make sure that my thought are clear to understand by my writing. My last reflection that I written shows somewhat of an epiphany because I finally learned what works best with me when I am writing my essays. An outline works best for me because when I write I have too much ideas that usually gets mixed up and then it doesn’t make sense to me or the reader. With the outline I was able to get my point across efficiently without getting off topic and losing my reader. However, I do have to improving to do in my writing but that will get better as my goes by in City College.