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Self-Reflective Essay

Writing has never been my strong point. When I enrolled in English 105, I was worried that I would meet a large challenge in a college level composition course that would be difficult to overcome. Although the course was challenging, the assignments, workshops, and freedom in choosing topics for papers, gave me the opportunity to greatly enjoy the writing process. In high school, papers are written, reviewed, revised, and edited by the person who wrote the paper, and then the paper is handed in for a grade. In this course, the portfolio style allows for much greater revisions, much deeper understanding and comprehension of the writing process, and a much better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses in a writer’s work.

For instance, a big part of presenting an argument in a paper is acknowledging the fact that there are other opinions and often other possible explanations as to why a certain thing was observed. This concept was not something that came to mind when I begin writing papers for this class, but was something I learned to do through the revision process. In the first paper I wrote for this class, the observation essay, in the first draft, I expressed my belief as to why people sit a specific sections of the dining halls on campus. My argument stated that people who come to the dining hall by themselves sit in the far section of the dining hall because they feel embarrassed that they are alone and hence do not want to be seen. In my first draft, I presented this idea as if this was the only possible reason. As I edited the paper though, in addition to restructuring the sentence, I added the word “perhaps”, and added an alternative reason for my observation by stating, “While the previous ...

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...hs were completely removed from the paper, and most of the other paragraphs were greatly restructured. In my third paper about art, my original description of the painting I interacted with was too long winded, and hence I removed close to half of that section from my paper.

With all the workshops, conferences and class discussions, my writing has improved. Key to the writing process, is the ability to review and edit one’s own paper. While the act of actually writing a paper and developing appropriate ideas may be difficult, the most difficult step of the writing process is finding places in the paper that may be removed and finding places that may be changed. Through the exercises and activities in English 105, I was able to better learn how to find faults in my paper, and I learned how essential the editing process is, in the creation of a great work of writing.