Reflective Essay
This assignment is a Reflective Letter to someone of my choosing that will reflect on my writing processes when doing an assignment. I will also be discussing the progression I have made through out the semester and the major revisions I have made on my writing assignments.
Dear Mom,
Even though you are already aware, school has never really been my strong suite. I was always told that I had potential but that I was just lazy. Through all the hell I put you through during high school you always had my back and continued to support me and push me to try my hardest. Well I am proud to confidently say I have been trying my hardest to break my old habits.
Habits such as procrastination, not handing in assignments, and skipping classes were my downfall in high school. Currently, working full time and going to school has helped me learn about self-responsibility and discipline. These two traits that I have acquired, and continue to acquire, have given my life structure and I think you would be proud of how far I have come. In school I am taking an English Composition class, and it has helped my writing and understanding of writing in more ways than I would have thought.
The very first day of class was so strange. My professor said there were no tests, no overpriced textbook, and no pop quizzes. Naturally I already loved the class and came to the ignorant conclusion that I would pass the class with ease. The first assignment was extremely difficult for me. We were supposed to write a nonfiction essay about an event that occurred the past month of our lives. When I sat down to start typing the essay I was so distracted. At the time I felt so unorganized and scatter brained, but luckily we were provided examples and a lot of texts that were filled with how to start writing. For me the most useful text was from author, Ray Bradbury, called Zen in The Art of Writing. I gained a lot of knowledge from him about getting an assignment started. After I was able to get some progress done the next biggest challenge was using descriptive language, or as my professor called it, “showing language”, because it should show the reader the scene you’re describing. Having access to this knowledge helped me write my essay in a timely matter and I now will have this skill for other classes in the future.
As a next step to improve my academics I need to manage my work and school schedules more efficiently. I previously took a step in the right direction when I got off once a week, but now I believe the next step would be getting up earlier on Saturdays to finish my school work. This would give me more time to get work done and hopefully more time to sleep for work.
I know you would be very proud of my improvements in my academics and I hope you are doing well,
Nick Paschall.
Even though you are already aware, school has never really been my strong suite. I was always told that I had potential but that I was just lazy. Through all the hell I put you through during high school you always had my back and continued to support me and push me to try my hardest. Well I am proud to confidently say I have been trying my hardest to break my old habits.
Habits such as procrastination, not handing in assignments, and skipping classes were my downfall in high school. Currently, working full time and going to school has helped me learn about self-responsibility and discipline. These two traits that I have acquired, and continue to acquire, have given my life structure and I think you would be proud of how far I have come. In school I am taking an English Composition class, and it has helped my writing and understanding of writing in more ways than I would have thought.
The very first day of class was so strange. My professor said there were no tests, no overpriced textbook, and no pop quizzes. Naturally I already loved the class and came to the ignorant conclusion that I would pass the class with ease. The first assignment was extremely difficult for me. We were supposed to write a nonfiction essay about an event that occurred the past month of our lives. When I sat down to start typing the essay I was so distracted. At the time I felt so unorganized and scatter brained, but luckily we were provided examples and a lot of texts that were filled with how to start writing. For me the most useful text was from author, Ray Bradbury, called Zen in The Art of Writing. I gained a lot of knowledge from him about getting an assignment started. After I was able to get some progress done the next biggest challenge was using descriptive language, or as my professor called it, “showing language”, because it should show the reader the scene you’re describing. Having access to this knowledge helped me write my essay in a timely matter and I now will have this skill for other classes in the future.
As a next step to improve my academics I need to manage my work and school schedules more efficiently. I previously took a step in the right direction when I got off once a week, but now I believe the next step would be getting up earlier on Saturdays to finish my school work. This would give me more time to get work done and hopefully more time to sleep for work.
I know you would be very proud of my improvements in my academics and I hope you are doing well,
Nick Paschall.
Draft 2
For this draft I decided that I would talk about all the research and work that I put into my I-Search paper and the process that occurred. Luckily I knew that I could use my Process section of my paper to help me. |
Dear Mom, Even though you are already aware, school has never really been my strong suite. I was always told that I had potential but that I was just lazy. Through all the hell I put you through during high school you always had my back and continued to support me and push me to try my hardest. Well I am proud to confidently say I have been trying my hardest to break my old habits. Habits such as procrastination, not handing in assignments, and skipping classes were my downfall in high school. Currently, working full time and going to school has helped me learn about self-responsibility and discipline. These two traits that I have acquired, and continue to acquire, have given my life structure and I think you would be proud of how far I have come. In school I am taking an English Composition class, and it has helped my writing and understanding of writing in more ways than I would have thought. The very first day of class was so strange. My professor said there were no tests, no overpriced textbook, and no pop quizzes. Naturally I already loved the class and came to the ignorant conclusion that I would pass the class with ease. The first assignment was extremely difficult for me. We were supposed to write a nonfiction essay about an event that occurred the past month of our lives. When I sat down to start typing the essay I was so distracted. At the time I felt so unorganized and scatter brained, but luckily we were provided examples and a lot of texts that were filled with how to start writing. For me the most useful text was from author, Ray Bradbury, called Zen in The Art of Writing. I gained a lot of knowledge from him about getting an assignment started. After I was able to get some progress done the next biggest challenge was using descriptive language, or as my professor called it, “showing language”, because it should show the reader the scene you’re describing. Having access to this knowledge helped me write my essay in a timely matter and I now will have this skill for other classes in the future. After we handed in our first assignment I decided I needed to make some revisions to it. My first step was to get some advice from my little sister. I know that my sound a little silly, but she is in all honors classes and has been writing at such a high level her entire life and also reads books 24/7. Once she read it the first thing she said was that it was really good and she asked me all about the assignment and my professor. This launched us into a very helpful conversation about questions I could ask my professor. So the next class we had I asked my professor, Sabatino Mangini, what changes I should make to it. He told me I needed to improve on contextualizing the car and the situation. Once I was home I began to type some paragraphs to help do just that. They included some telling language instead of descriptive language to help set up the scene for the reader. This was actually quite simple and I did not struggle with the distractions that I normally do when I'm on the computer such as twitter and Reddit. After I finished up my additions and revisions to the paper I called over my sister, Emily, and asked her what she thought my theme(s) were. We went back and forth for a while about what it could be and what symbols i had in my paper that supported whatever theme we agreed on. In the end we came to the conclusion that my theme was something along the lines of " youth and risk go hand in hand making the best memories." We ended up talking about how my uncle represented the risk and my laughter symbolized what a great memory it was. Our last assignment was our I-search paper. For this final assignment we were to write a paper on a debatable topic that would inform and persuade the audience or readers. When we first start looking for topics to research I was not really sure which one i wanted to do. Originally I was going to research the prescription pill industry after watching Food Matters because it was something that i felt passionate about. Eventually though i decided to research the GMO industry. I started my research with a simple Google search to find out about GMOs and what they were all about. The first thing I immediately noticed was how many results were about avoiding GMOs and five reasons why you should say no to GMOs. Once I realized the immense amount of controversy surrounding GMOs it made ask myself why? So I decided to go to Redddit.com and search the front page for “GMOs” and the first hit I received was about Monsanto. This was the point when my heavy researching began. One article lead to another article and it went on and on until I was left with a massive amount of facts. I knew in the back of my head I still needed to find a more reliable source, so I began to search for scientific studies that had been done. Once I gathered all my sources and information I realized that I had clearly picked side on the ongoing controversy about GMOs. It genuinely made my angry, which was weird at first, but I decided to just start to through all my feeling and opinions on the paper. After about 30 minutes of typing on a Microsoft Word document I was left with a paper that resembled a grumpy old man bitching about what’s wrong with the world. I began to strip away at the things I did not need and I also started to support my opinions with all the facts that I had gathered from my sources. After about another hour of typing I was starting to feel a little more confident about my paper which no longer looked like an 80 year old man’s rant. I decided to take a break from the paper to get some fresh air, so I took my dog for a walk around the block and drank some cold ice water. Slowly but surely I added more details and more facts about Monsanto (which by the way gets automatically capitalized when I type it in Microsoft word. I am not sure why that bothers me so much, but it does. I really don’t like that company at all.) Once I had enough supporting details I sent my paper to my girlfriend, Steph, and my sister, Emily. Once they had sent their feedback to me I made a few more surface level corrections like run on sentences. The paper had really typed itself once I felt passionate enough about it. I know you would be proud of my progression through out the semester mom, Nick Paschall. |