Hello Everyone!
During my last days of the fall semester my professor made the decision to base our final to create a portfolio for our CUNY Commons website in my FIQWS 10008. I believe this semester was a major journey that needs to be documented and explained because not only will it show the progress I have had during the semester as a writer but will also prove my understanding and explain my difficulties in achieving the course learning outcomes.
My first assignment consisted of writing a summary and response essay. This essay primarily worked around our understanding of the topics we were learning at the time such as the Freudian Concepts and how “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman reflected on the way doctors dealt with the disorders of mentally-illed patients. Through this essay, it demonstrated the exploration and analysis of the writing and reading in genre and rhetorical situations by focusing on the way the narrator was being treated by her husband who was a doctor, in the story and how wrong it was. I backed this statement up by including Freud’s realization about the mistreatment within patients through his first lectures to conceive a genre around a dependable argument. I hopefully demonstrated the truth behind how a mentally-ill patient gets treated by doctors and how doctors perceive it. This first assignment really helped me see errors I never knew I would have made without peer review. One of the most important course learning outcomes was developing strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing. This prepared me for the future papers and got me used to reviving my essays more. The collaboration between my classmates made it easier for not only me but themselves too. Sometimes, I would catch myself reading someone’s paper and noticing the same mistakes in my paper, so I would go back and revise mine too. In other words, it simply killed two birds with one stone. It was a team effort.
Following my second assignment, the exploratory essay, helped me practice my understanding of the rhetorical terms and the strategies needed in order to help me improve my writing. I got the hang of structuring the essay more from showing instead of telling. This means that in this essay I wasn’t making it all about Freud and just telling what the story “It Was A Different Day When They Killed The Pig” by João Ubaldo Ribeiro is about but more so leading to the general thesis and including Freudian concepts as examples only. The way this essay made me get closer to my classmates and professors made the process easier. Especially, when the purpose of the paper was to demonstrate how the hardships the main character went through and the significance it held within Freud’s important concepts, such as the “wishful-impulse.” For example, one of my peers edited my EE and gave me this advice…
This helped me alot because this allowed my paragraph to flow better and exclude certain things that were not necessary for my paper.
One of the most important learning outcomes this semester has been learning the understanding the use of print and digital technology and its importance on how it signifies the analysis between the range of audiences. This helped me compose better structuring for the readers of my writing pieces. The importance of distinguishing the different needs of an audience when reading a paper should be one of the top priorities when writing a paper. For my understanding on some of my work most of them were directed to my peers and my professors, or anyone interested in reading my piece. But each paper held different formats and structures due to the approach of their genres. For example, each paper consists of a different exigence into the tone and composition of the topic.
The communication with the librarian to locate certain research sources was very important to learn the accuracy of databases to state the credibility of my citations and evidence for my paper. If the librarian was never introduced I believe I would have found the wrong articles for evidence towards my final critical research paper because I never knew how crucial it is to have valid resources to back up an argument for your writing. Without her I would’ve had inaccurate evidence to support my thesis in the final critical research analysis paper. I also would have never known the difference between a primary and secondary source. It was one of the top course learning outcomes for my first semester as a freshman that will always be useful in my upcoming years ahead. The support from the librarian and my professors for my writing was something I did not expect from college. I know that I am not the only one that has heard this but ever since high school my teachers would continuously state that college professors do not let things pass and do not worry and help you on your work. But so far they are absolutely wrong, the tremendous amount of effort both my professors reach to help us students no matter the extent is undeniable and very much appreciated.
Out of all the course learning outcomes this one in particular stood out the most to me due to the writing assignments held in class. Primarily, the discussion board posts. The discussion boards helped us practice how to use strategies learned in class to build the summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis and argumentation in our writing. For example, I had a discussion board post to analyze the connections between two stories “A Sick Rose” by William Blake, “A Country Doctor” Franz Kafka, and Sigmund Freud’s concepts given in lecture three.
The feedback my professor gave me was to not over summarize which is why I highlighted the most important ideas I wanted to make from my analysis of all three. This is very important for me because when I write I tend to get lost in the words and feel the need to give more explanations in order for readers to understand it. However, even the simplest terms of ideas can give someone a good explanation and this course taught me a lot on how to keep it short and simple. In this next recent discussion post I hoped I achieved not over summarizing to not throw off the reader.
Practicing MLA format was probably the most difficult for me because ever since the beginning of this semester I have had unreliable work cited pages for my papers. I genuinely never got told the reality in highschool by my teachers but the way my professors in this semester made sure to comment on my mistakes helped me improve a lot. Now I know how crucial it is to have a good work cited page because it proves to the reader where you get your citations and it backs up your evidence if you provide a valid resource page and include in-text citations when necessary. Before, I did not know that I had to include the author’s name when stating an article because it wasn’t needed back in my highschool. I also never included in- text citations in highschool but now I’m so used to it that I never hand in a paper without in-text citations.
Finishing off this semester helped me expand my knowledge as a writer and to convert those hardships in my writing into ways of literature that I will be forever grateful for.
