SBE Essay Reflection
This was my first official college “paper” or essay, so I felt like it was a great start. Personally, writing isn’t as difficult for me because when I am in the moment, my ideas start flowing and I just need to get everything down. At first, I was nervous when I saw that the essay had to be six to seven pages, but as I was writing, I was surprised at how fast I was reaching the word limit. I was also nervous because I felt like in high school, we used to spend two to three weeks working on essays as a class. Now that I am in college, I understand what people mean when they say college students have more freedom. It is just different than what I expected. I think it might be because everything is online, and once I see my classmates also working on assignments, I won’t feel alone. One of my strengths was implementing evidence. I was able to dissect and use the rhetorical elements such as tone and word choice to justify my claims. At the same time, I have not been able to see where my writing level is at. I’m curious to see what grade I will get and then I will know how to feel about my writing. I know there is always room for more improvement, and I remind myself that is why I’m in school to learn. If I could do it differently, I would research more deeply and pick out my sources with more attention and caution. The sources are the essence of the essay, and I underestimated the assignment for picking four sources and focused more on the writing part. I learned that the research and evidence is more crucial in your writings than you might think. Something that I’d like to work on is my word choice and using a sophisticated level of language, especially. However, it is equally as important that I find a balance between “big” words and simpler words, because sometimes it is best to use simple words to explain something.
Composition in 2 Genres Reflection
Most of my bigger edits have been made so far. All that is left before final submission is some minor edits. As I reflect back on this project, I think something that went well was being creative. This project wasn’t limiting with certain questions or criteria. Instead, we were able to use whichever genre we wanted and create it however we wanted to. I was able to use my imagination and act like a reporter for my newspaper article. Additionally, I was also able to explore and actually use some of the Instagram features that I haven’t used.
If I had to do something differently, it would be replacing one of the genres with a painting. I saw one of the classmate’s paintings and I thought it was beautiful how they were able to make it so meaningful and add so many different messages and symbols. I could tell there were so many small details that they had paid attention to and it was very inspiring overall. Something I learned and thought was cool was seeing how these social issues and messages can be depicted through so many genres.
Something else I learned from this process was how helpful peer editing can be. Not only was I able to take a look at my classmate’s work, get some ideas, and help them with my thoughts and opinions, I was able to get feedback from others. For the first project, I didn’t receive as much peer reviews but for this project, I received a good amount and I was able to get outside ideas that I had never thought of before.
