Self-Reflection: Turning the Critical Eye onto Oneself

I have always found exhilaration and engagement in the act of writing, regardless of whether it be critically approaching another author’s work or writing fiction as a means of expression. However, even though writing has always been one of my strengths, it was challenging to take those initial steps past the high school, five-paragraph essays form that constricted my ideas for so long. I have always been a thinker, and through this course and a few others that I have experienced thus far in my college career, I have expanded and sharpened my critical analysis skills. I have challenged myself to dig deeper into texts than ever before, come to realize that there are methods in which I choose to follow in my analysis, and realized that there are narrative forms that I have underappreciated.

In the past, I have approached a text that I needed to analysis by simply looking at the surface content or the most obvious meaning. I wanted to know exactly what the author was intending to convey to readers without considering that a meaning may be derived without the author intending it. I got done what I needed to by adding fluff or padding here and there to get the length and didn’t bother digging further. But now, I have learned to tease out every possible meaning of a text. There is that unexplored void in the literary world where readers interpret one action in a thousand different ways and I want to explore all of those possibilities. In this course, in particular, I have learned to not accept something at face value but rather to question why something is the way it is. As a result, my informal writings began to be more complex and concise as the semester went on. I stopped looking at the obvious, and dug further into a text in an a...

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... feel like I have learned so much in span of my studies, but all it takes is a course like this one that helps me identify what in my writing and analytic technique needs to be improved. I was not only able to expand my thought process because I built onto techniques and approaches that I already used, but I also discovered a new technique that will help me decipher the meanings behind literary works. I have realized that a deeper and more complex meaning in a work needs to be discovered and that not everything is straight forward. As a final thought, I also learned to appreciate a new form of narratives that will allow me to expand my horizons in the future. I benefited greatly from this course and the proof lies in the steady improvement of my informal writings and manner of analysis. I look forward to continuing my studies and becoming the best writer I can be.