Dahlia Michilena
Professor Hoehne
Fairy Tales & Rewritings
12 December 2019
Reflection
Growing up, I always loved to read, however, I never really took a liking to writing – poetry excluded. I felt that I never truly learned how to write until high school – when I learned how to write in MLA format for the first time. Throughout my entire high school career, I have been taught to be able to write many essays, especially under a certain time frame. This idea made me believe that a college English course would not particularly phase me, however, I was profoundly wrong about that. After taking this course, I have realized that high school has held my hand throughout most of my writing. In writing the Literacy Narrative, Exploratory Essay, and Researched Critical Analysis, I learned much about myself as a writer and improved my ability to develop a well-researched essay.
One of the major concepts I will carry with me from this course is recognizing and applying the rhetorical terms that I have learned – genre, purpose, audience, media/design, and stance – in my writing. At first, I struggled to interpret these rhetorical terms within my writing, however, with each coming essay that I wrote, I progressively became more adept at recognizing and incorporating these terms so that not only I can recognize them, but that my audience can as well. Another major tool that helped me throughout my writing this semester was The Norton Field Guide to Writing. It was extremely useful in providing the correct ways to incorporate MLA format into one’s writing. I also found the explanations and examples for every following essay very useful. In each essay, I found myself referring back to this book and reflecting that within my writing.
The first essay that I wrote this semester – the Literacy Narrative – was not as easy to write as it seemed. It required us to write about a particular moment in our lives where literacy had impacted us in some way. Yes, it was only supposed to be about one page long, and yes, it was a piece of writing based on myself, however, what I failed to realize was that writing about myself would be one of the most difficult things to do. The web that our class made when Professor Hoehne introduced the Literacy Narrative to us immediately gave me an idea of what I would write about – the first book that I had read and enjoyed in years. I named this particular piece of writing after the movie I was about to watch – A Walk to Remember – when, instead, I decided to read my book, hence the title of my essay: “A Book to Remember”. In the completion of this essay, I found myself insecure about my grammar, especially my use of commas. Having my classmates review my Literacy Narrative really helped me with fixing my essay because it allowed me to have a new perspective on it, catching things that I would not have been able to on my own. Professor Hoehne’s comments on my Literacy Narrative also gave me much confidence in my writing and made me more aware of what I need to fix, which I put towards the next two papers. From this essay, I also realized that my writing was influenced by books, articles and other essays that I have read in the past. Later on, my writing started to become less like that of my favorite authors and more of my own.
The next essay – the Exploratory Essay – was one of the most challenging pieces of writing that was ever assigned to me. Although the idea of it– writing about other people’s opinions about a general statement – does not seem very difficult, getting this paper done correctly proved to be a task. Before this class, I had only ever written argumentative essays, therefore, writing from an unbiased view was very difficult for me to do. I found myself rewriting entire paragraphs and deleting large portions of my essay because I inadvertently inserted my own opinion. When I reread my essay, I found my thesis very biased as well, so I phrased it into a question to make it seem more neutral. The Exploratory Essay was also the first paper given this semester that required me to use outside academic sources. Having the librarian show us how to acquire these sources definitely helped me in the process of finding reliable and accurate evidence, but it still took much work of my own to find sources that supported my specific thesis. I learned that I have to dedicate at least one day to finding sources with relatable and useful quotes. This was also the first paper that required the full extent of MLA formatting, from the header to in-text citation to a full Works Cited page. One of the things that I failed to check when going over my essay was seeing if I incorporated all of the sources that I used in my essay in my Works Cited page. Now this is something that I triple check in my writing, and had done for the next essay to come. From Professor Hoehne’s comments, I realized that my writing had improved, however, I still had few grammatical errors. My favorite part about writing these essays was coming up with a title. I always saved this task for last so that I could have a greater understanding of what I truly meant in my writing because I also learned that the ideas that one can start out with are not necessarily going to be the same when the essay is complete.
The final essay that I had to do this semester was the Researched Critical Analysis, where I had to make an argument about a particular fairy tale and convince my audience to share this view. Although I have had previous experience writing an argumentative essay, this was the most difficult paper to complete this semester. For this essay I chose to make it an extension of my Exploratory Essay, adding more arguable phrases within my thesis. As I learned from the Exploratory Essay, the first thing I did to begin the process of completing this essay was dedicate a day to finding reliable and credible sources from the CUNY Library. I found many pieces of evidence that I was able to analyze and interpret to advocate for my thesis. This was the first essay that I have ever hand-written an outline for, and I have to say, that it made the process much easier. Through this, I was able to organize the quotations that I was using and make sure that I cited and incorporated the appropriate sources. Using MLA format progressively became easier, and with this essay, came almost naturally. For the Researched Critical Analysis, along with every other essay I have written, I chose to not include pictures or other media within my writing. In this essay, I overlooked two mistakes that could have been easily avoided if I took advantage of peer review.
Overall, this semester has expanded my knowledge of writing conventions and transformed my writing for the better. I learned many new tactics to generate essays at a more proficient and organized pace. One of the things that I am particularly proud of is the improvement in my grammar from having “minor grammatical errors within” to it being “nearly flawless”. I know that from this point forward, writing is only going to get much more difficult, however, without what I learned this semester, I know that it would be even harder. Although my fondness for writing has not particularly increased, I do have a greater appreciation and understanding of it.
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