Throughout the semester all of my essays have been different from the previous. Essays aren’t something I necessarily struggle with, but there can always be improvements made no matter what. When I submitted my first assignment and got feedback for it, I was a bit distraught. I had a slightly big ego when it comes to my writing, I believed I was at least an above average writer when in reality I was average at best. My first feedback humbled me and made me realize how much more I need to improve on. For example, my analysis. My analysis for evidence was very surface level and I did not relate it back to my thesis or go in depth with it. The feedback for this made me go back and see how I can relate it to my thesis and provide a better in depth analysis. Another big problem for me is citing. In high school I cited once in all of the essays I wrote so I wasn’t familiar with citing. Having to cite every essay was a bit of a struggle and I’m still not used to citing correctly. 

I realized how my thesis was not recognizable according to previous peer reviews. The peer reviews and feedback made me realize my thesis usually wasn’t identifiable nor did it include the necessary wording for the prompts. For example in my Exploratory essay, my thesis was rated two out of five. I’m usually very general when stating things as I am afraid if I get too specific I’ll be wrong. I’m learning to become more specific as this was one of my criticisms for that essay from my fellow peer. In my final draft, I made sure to change general things into specific things. For example in my first draft I used, “a series of unfortunate things” to describe what the doctor from “A Country Doctor” by Franz Kafka went through. I changed this to, “multiple hardships, and inner conflict” to be a bit more specific than before.

Being vague was one of my biggest problems throughout all of my essays. For example in my Summary and Response essay I stated, “…these feelings… Back then the doctors…”. Both of these excerpts show how imprecise I was while writing. Instead of saying back then, i could have said the time period which was the early 1900’s. Like previously stated, I’m not the best when it comes to citing. I liked incorporating quotes in the middle of my sentences and paraphrasing certain parts of stories. I did not realize you had to cite when you paraphrase as the idea isn’t your own. I genuinely think my analysis has gotten better compared to my first essay of the semester. In my Summary and response essay one of my analyses was, “Throughout all of sisters marriage, she was repressing these feelings for her brother in law and these feelings were waiting for any possible time to surface.” In this analysis I’m just restating what the quote says and im not going in depth nor am i relating it back to my thesis; it’s a very surface level analysis. Compared to an analysis from my Exploratory essay, “These worms are phallic symbols and can represent a penis.” This quote alone shows how I started to think more deeply about the text and was able to find other meanings in relation to Freud.

In all honesty the rhetoric concepts were something hard for me to grasp. Even now i dont have a good understanding of those concepts. I have taken into account my audience when typing essays. One of the assignments we had was to read about rhetorical situations. In this reading it explained how the author might make assumptions to what the reader will think while writing their paper. I am guilty of doing this in my previous essays. I assumed the reader would understand what I was trying to convey, and assume things correctly just like I did when I reread my essay. In reality that is not the case and this is when being very specific helped me advance. Being specific allows for no gray area between the reader’s mind and details of the story and allows them to not make incorrect assumptions based on what I write. Even after this, this is the only thing I picked up involving rhetoric concepts.

There is still more to come in my journey of improving as a writer. What I’ve learned throughout this semester was very valuable and essential for all future writings. I still need to improve on my citing, specification, rhetoric concepts, and many more. But being aware of these things I’m lacking in is the first step to continuing my improvement of writing. Learning remotely has also been bad for me as I like in person classes to have one on ones with professors and peers. But considering the circumstances, I think office hours and peer reviews have all been beneficial and key to my growth as a writer.