Introduction

       The Work and Family writing class has been a challenging but beneficial course. Before I actually had to do the essays and self-reflection, I thought that it was going to be easy. I thought I would do well with all tasks given to me just like I did in high school. Throughout the semester I noticed that I struggled. The tasks that were given to me, took time and patience to complete. I strongly believe that this class has helped me become a better writer. My professor’s feedback, peer review and articles that were assigned for homework made me analyze my writing in depth.  Drafting, one of the strategies frequently used in the work and family writing class, gave me the opportunity to think critically about my work so that I could fix my flaws and better my writing.

The first essay I had to do was the identity narrative essay. In this essay I had to choose one experience from my life that had helped me grow into the person I’m today. I first had to create an outline in which I had to write the main points that I would discuss in the essay. The outline was a helpful technique to use before writing the essay since I could later use it to expand my ideas. In my first essay I wrote about a time that I was bullied in middle school. My professor informed me that I had failed to develop the essay with that one experience. I had mentioned my whole schooling experience instead of focusing in one particular event. My instructor gave me the opportunity to rewrite the essay and the second time I figured that I would write about a different experience. I noticed that since the experience had occurred in middle school, I didn’t have a good memory of the experience to be able to write in detail so I would have to change the experience. The second time I wrote about an experience which had occurred to me senior year of high school and this time I was able to write a better essay. My memories were more recent and due to this I was able to explain in detail and focus in that one experience.

After writing the identity narrative essay and all the other essays I was required to write a self-reflection essay in which the rhetorical situation of the essay was analyzed. In the self- reflection I also had to address the course learning outcomes in order to examine what I learned writing the assignment and how I had developed skills to help me write future assignments. What I learned writing the identity narrative essay is that I have to pay attention to what an assignment requires. At first I was following my own interpretation of what the essay had to include. When I stayed on task and developed my essay from one experience I noticed that my essay seemed more organized. It was also easier for the audience to follow along. Including too many experiences made the readers get distracted faster and I noticed this when I was doing peer review. When my classmates read my first essay, they told me that It was easy to get lost because there were too many topics in my essay.

The second essay I had to write was a descriptive essay. For this essay I had to choose a place, person or thing and I had to describe it in detail. Before writing the essay our instructor gave us a simple task in which we had to describe an object without giving up the name. This exercise was helpful since I was thinking of ways to describe the object in detail so that my classmates would be able to figure out what it was. My professor’s feedback helped me see that my first draft of the descriptive essay had voice issues. I fixed the voice issues by only using first person throughout my essay. My descriptive essay also had many surface errors such as spaces between commas and run-on sentences. When I first read my essay I wasn’t able to see these mistakes but when doing peer review, my group members were able to recognize them.

My  descriptive essay included parts of Venice that I found appealing. I used sensory details to paint a picture for the audience. The context of my essay included many detailed descriptions of the place, which helped readers visualize Venice. In my introduction I had a strong thesis which helped readers identify the purpose of the essay. My introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion were well thought. In my introduction I introduced the event, in my body paragraphs I described  Venice in depth and in my conclusion I tried to sum up all the information I had written about throughout the essay.

Writing the descriptive essay I have learned that it’s important to take breaks when writing. When I wrote the whole essay in a limited amount of time, I wasn’t able to process my ideas properly. I did that with my first identity narrative essay and I got a low grade. With my second rewrite I did a paragraph an hour which helped me organize my thoughts and write a better paper. I used the same strategy for my descriptive essay. Another prominent component that needs to be applied when writing essays is peer review. Peer review helped me see many mistakes that I wasn’t able to see when reading my essay. Getting to hear someone else’s point of view also  helped me know what is needed to keep the audience engaged.

Before writing my essay I read “The Corner Store” an essay written by Eudora Welty. This essay was a good example of how a descriptive essay is supposed to look like. The essay gave me a better idea and inspired me to write. Our professor suggested that we read “The Corner Store” and I did so because at first I wasn’t so sure how I would write my essay. The descriptive essay was the essay I did the best on because I was very passionate writing about Venice. When I thought about the place I would get excited and this made it easier for me to write the essay.

The third and final essay I had to write was the critical analysis essay. I had to use the research I was already doing in my sociology class to develop my critical analysis essay. My essay focuses on parenting styles and their effects on children. This essay had to consist of an introduction, explaining what I was going to write about in my essay. In my second paragraph I had to include background information. In the third paragraph I had to include detailed information about services and my observations. The last requirements were writing my analysis including my argument and at least one counterargument and rebuttle. Personally I think writing the critical analysis essay was the hardest essay to write. One of the most challenging things doing this essay was connecting many sources to one argument. For this assignment it was required that I include at least 5 outside sources that would relate to my topic.

My first drafts for the critical analysis essay had too many flaws. My introduction was including unnecessary information and my thesis wasn’t clear enough to the audience. I also didn’t fairly compare the two young boys that I was examining for my research paper. Since I included more information about one child than the other, my points were weak. The counterargument wasn’t successfully rebuttled because my refutation didn’t fully address the opposing view. For my final paper I made a shorter introduction that only contained specific information about my topic. I realized that giving too much information would make the audience lose interest on my essay. Before doing my body paragraphs, I wrote down my points in a chronological order in a separate piece of paper. Then I had to know how to connect these points. I remembered that one time I was assigned to read a source that explained how to connect my ideas and how to make the essay flow easily. I used “As a Result”, chapter 8 of the book They Say I Say to know how I can connect all the components in my essay. When my paragraphs were in a specific order it was easier for me to write the essay.  I have learned that when writing an essay that requires the use of sources, it’s important to first plan what you will include in the essay. Going directly to the essay without taking some time to think about what you will write will negatively impact your writing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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