English Reflective Essay

This semester entering English 102 I thought of myself as a bad writer with a lot to say and no idea how to coordinate it or express it. A big reason why I took English stretch composition was to strengthen my writing skills. I feel like I have a better idea of where to put my ideas but I really need help with the technical writing and how to do research papers correctly. My concerns over the semester are not the same as they were at the beginning, they have changed. One of my concerns was that I wouldn’t know how to organize a college essay, but that concern is gone now. A new concern I have this semester is my run on sentences and the punctuation and the lack thereof.

The writing view for me has changed this semester in the sense of the multiple drafts and doing it in bits and pieces and making it

better and better with every draft. Before I use to do one and done and hope that everything was okay, when I knew I could have done so much better. In Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Drafts” she states “I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident.”(1) This line hit me because we students believe that all theses great writers are great because of their abilities because it's a god given talent like being good at singing or dancing. I was shocked to hear like us they sometimes don’t have the ideas flow to them and they have to do multiple drafts to end up with a great product. Lamott says ”All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts.”(1) Lamott gives some good advice on how you should not hold back on anything you want to say in your first draft because like she says “The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page.”(1) I have never thought of an essay like a child that I can let loose and run all over the place and let them do as they please; And that i should view my essay the same way was something crazy to me but to not fret because it was going to be fine. I like how Lamott is very realistic and relatable. She is honest in saying most writers don't know what they are doing till they have finished and that's how I feel. I ask myself when I am writing these different papers what am I doing or where am I trying to go with this and you don’t really know till the very end.

In english 102 I have come to learn that being edited by your peers and doing workshops can be very beneficial for both you and your classmates.

In Bob Mayberry’s article “Why Doesn’t This Look Like High School English?” He hits the topic that having your teacher correct and mark up your paper isn’t as beneficial as we thought. “ From the markings your teacher leaves scrawled across your paper, you will figure out how to rewrite it. Right? And from this habit of making the improvements teachers suggest to you year after year, you will learn to be a better writer. Wrong.”(2) This really was a shocker to me but made sense in the sense of they just tell you exactly what they want you to fix and you fix it and get a better grade but that in itself isn’t learning. You are just doing what's on that paper instead of thinking about what needs to be fixed to make the paper better not just for the teacher but better as a whole. By having a classmate or someone else give me advice it can help me learn where I need to grow and improve as well as teach me to learn how to ask for help in the areas I believe need improvement. And that's a skill I learned in college this

semester.
I believe that the workshops help as well in the aspect of seeing how other people write and there styles. Mike Bunn says in “ How to Read Like a Writer” “When you Read Like a Writer (RLW) you work to identify some of the choices the author made so that you can better understand how such choices might arise in your own writing.”(3) When reading these different articles in class and for homework I have seen the many different styles and the choices the author makes as well those of my classmates make. I take into account both of those pieces I read and try to see what I like that they did and what I don’t like that they did and put it into my own writing. Mike bunn brings up the idea of always asking questions when reading “I started asking, how—how did the writer get me to feel, how did the writer say something so that it remains in my memory when many other things too easily fall out, how did the writer communicate his/her intentions about genre, about irony? (119–20)” (4) That's something new I learned this year in english 102 always ask questions get more out of author, try to see why they made that choice and you can maybe do the same if you understand it.

The whole idea of writing to me was you're either good at it naturally or you're not good at all but time and time again I have been shown in this english class this semester with all these articles that that is not the case. It is specially relevant to me in Sarah Allens “The Inspired Writer vs. the Real Writer” She gives us insight on how a lot of students do not like writing and feel they struggle with it but what we don't realize is that even the big successful scholars struggle with writing. Allen says “And yet, I confess that I find myself to be genuinely surprised when some well-respected scholar in my field admits to struggling with his writing.”(3) Allens whole big idea, that came through to me was that not all writing especially at the beginning is going to be good and much less perfect but that does not mean we should give up. We have to brainstorm because the ideas don’t always come right away.

With this upcoming spring semester I feel like I have a better sense of what is going to be asked of me in college and like Gita DasBender says in “Critical Thinking in College Writing: From the Personal to the Academic” “You will often come across critical thinking and analysis as requirements for assignments in writing and upper-level courses in a variety of disciplines. Instructors have varying explanations of what they actually require of you, but, in general, they expect you to respond thoughtfully to texts you have read”(38). That's something I learned constantly comes up not only in college but I had it in high school as well. You have to put your analysis and thoughts into it , what did you get out of this? If not what good is it to your reader. Anyone can summarize but it takes practice to be able to use critical thinking and analysis and that's a skill I have been able to work on this semester and improve. Especially when it came to the “Against Meat” essay I had to critically think and analyze the article to articulate what I got out of it.

Throughout the many essays and articles we have read I have come to see why I chose to take english 102/103 it wasn’t because I was scared of college writing it was because I wanted to get better at writing as a whole. For college, for me, for the future. I wanted to spend time getting more familiar with everything and this class has taught me that. English 102/103 has taught me more of a open mindedness to things with the many topics covered in here. With the essays I have read from other students you see how different each and everyone of us really is and sometimes you forget that. You forget how different everyone really is till you start reading all these different opinions and how someones can take something read differently than you did and from there new ideas start, from seeing someone else's point of view. That's something I am very grateful for from getting from english 102 is the fact that we get to put our voices out there and in doing so better our view of the world and issues.