Reflective Essay

Introduction

            Some of the things that I have struggled with in this course was being able to maintain the workload. This is my first time taking an English since high school circa 2009-2010. This was definitely a wakeup call for all the things that I had forgotten that comes with an English course. I also have not had to wake up ever so early for a class or work in so long! Being an adult, I made sure to have a tolerable and maintainable schedule. It was very challenging practicing self-discipline. Moving forward and working on these issues, I will need to implement a lot more self-discipline because I know that my career will countless project with very unreasonable schedules. This is something that I have to really get used to. I can do this by choosing to have an earlier bedtime which can result in an earlier wake up time. Getting enough rest, a balanced breakfast, setting alarms, and just taking myself through “waking up early” bootcamp. Writing skills that I have improved over the course of this class are learning how to properly write essays in the MLA format. I have not had to write a paper that required this format before taking this English course. I now know how to put a paper in the normally expected format, and this will definitely help me for future classes and projects. My strengths as a writer consist of creativity and a good choice of words. I think that especially when there is a required amount of words or pages for a specific assignment are due, I do a really good job of stretching out sentences in a good way. I am very critical on myself when writing because I know how intelligent I am, and I take pride in the fact that I can show my intelligence through my writing.

Rhetorical Analysis

            I learned the actual definition of rhetoric and rhetorical analysis. This too was the first time that I have ever had to write a rhetorical analysis paper. I learned that the goal of a rhetorical analysis is to articulate how the author writes, rather than what they actually wrote. In doing so, you will utilize strategies to the goals or purpose of writing the piece. Analysis is different from other forms of writing because it evaluates strengths and weaknesses, it makes reasoned judgments, and draws conclusions. Other writing forms only explain a theory or recount the events that have taken place. In the terms of other forms of writing, analysis teaches on to write in a different because it has a bit more of a personal touch to the information that will be included on the paper. There is a lot of opinions within a rhetorical analysis after doing research of whatever topic you may be writing about. I struggled with identifying strengths in weaknesses. Although, it is easy to figure out basic ins and outs of a paper, I wanted to think a bit more outside the box. Essentially, dive a little deeper into the problems and the good ways to improve writing about them. The things I did well was completing the essay in an overall quality manner. I believe that I made a lot of good points on my topic and portrayed them as such within my essay.

Exploratory Essay

            I learned that an exploratory essay is a paper in which the writer works through problems or examines an idea of experience without the requirement of backing up or supporting the claim or thesis. I learned that it is a special type of paper which gives the writer privilege to explore the problem when writing. While working on it, you do not need to make a thesis and find and give the supporting argument. You are able to feel free to make a research on your subject and show it to people. It wasn’t difficult to not take a position on a topic, but it was a bit tough trying to use the proper tense when writing the paper. I noticed I would go back and forth with the different tenses I was writing in and had to teach myself to do it the same way throughout the entire paper. Exploratory essays play the function in other types of essays in college by once you have completed said essay, you are able to use the different ways you can obtain information for future topics and future assignments. I struggled with organizing my topic into a specific order that was easy to understand and would not be difficult for my audience to read. The things I did well was using the links and information I found in my essay and making it sound good.

Research Essay

            I learned that a research essay is a clearly written and well-organized essay that involves researching materials using sources and synthesizing what you learn from it with your own ideas. I also learned that its structure is very typical to the normal essays that may be written in an English course. Research essays are different from other forms of writing because this kind of essay is all informational and factually based. Whereas in other forms of writing, there are a lot of opinions, this kind of essay is not opinion based at all. It was incredibly difficult to find information on my topic. I think that my topic of creative directing is not necessarily a common career and topic to write a research paper on. Using the online resources that we were taught to use in class helped in my journey to complete the paper but finding proper articles and links to complete the essay was a big challenge that I had to tackle to get it done. It was not difficult to stick with only one position as I believed that all of sections of the essay itself correlated with each other. Research essays teach you how to properly locate information and facts for your paper but also apply said learned research skills to any other forms of writing that you may have complete in future writing projects and assignments. I struggled with finding the write information for my paper. I did really well with organizing my facts into paragraphs and pages for my paper once I was able to find them.

Multimodal Project

            I learned that a multimodal project is one the uses visuals and audio to complete a project based on an essay that was written. Multimodal projects are different from other forms of writing because it is essentially the only assignment that we have completed that requires an actual presentation and visual explanation and representation of the topic of the essay and the information that is being presented within the essay. It was only a little difficult to locate media to utilize in my multimodal project. The difficulty came to be when I was trying to apply said media to my essay. I feel like I struggled with meeting the time requirements of the slides and the overall project itself. What I did was well was use my creativity to put together a really good and visually pleasing project.

Conclusion

            After completing this course, I wish I would I have maintained deadlines better and put forth more effort to understand the assignment instructions in full detail. I think my arrogance in me being a good writer got the best of me when taking this course and has humbled me very much so. I am very proud of not stressing myself out with the workload, granted it became and has been very overwhelming given the current global circumstances, I have given myself multiple pep talks to stay focused and complete the course. The completion of this course and the assignments within it, has taught me how to write academically in a very structured way. I have a lot more organization and understanding for the organization required within the assignments. I will use the knowledge I have learned of writing all the many essays to be able to write better and more academically competent assignments. One piece of advice that I would give to someone who is taking this course in the future is to stay focused, keep a leveled head, and invest in a planner to better organize assignments and deadlines for the assignments.