Exploratory Essay Self-Reflection

     My main goal in writing this essay was to effectively get my point across while meeting all the requirements of the assignment. Also, I aimed to take risks in my writing. I believe this whole paper was a new way of writing that I have never done before. I had always been taught to make my opinion known in my writing, so that is how I wrote. This paper allowed me to step back from that and focus on the assignment given.  I worked to explain the connection I found between the articles, and then support it only on what I had gotten from the authors.

    I used my time as best I could while developing this paper. I started by writing down things I had noticed from all of the articles. I found a common theme, and started making an outline.  Being a pre-nursing major, my time outside of class is mostly spent on chemistry and biology, so I definitely used time in class to my advantage. It was time that I could focus on my paper and as I listened to our discussion about the essay, I got more ideas on how to improve my writing. My use of time fit my goals because it was so limited. I could not put it off and procrastinate, I knew it would be the only time I could work on it so I really pushed myself to the fullest to make the paper effective.

     I saw my writing changing a lot in this paper.  To begin with, it was not the way I normally write.  I found myself going back and revising a lot due to the fact that I would slip up and write my opinion or start to summarize. I definitely took advantage of my peers. I greatly appreciate everything they had to say and suggestions they had.  We all worked together to help and expand our ideas in writing.

     My cousin proofread my paper before I printed it out for class. I did not tell her the assignment, but made her try to figure out what it was after she read my paper. She pointed out things that did not make since or flow with my paper.

     I learned many things about myself as a writer. I learned that I can be successful if I take the time and apply myself in an appropriate way. I learned that I can write a decent paper without showing my opinion. As I was reading my group’s papers, I learned techniques that they used that I found to be very significant and effective. I also learned ways to improve my writing from their feedback.

     The hardest part of this paper was finding all of the specific examples to back up the common theme that I found. I had to read the articles over and over again to find things to talk about in my paper. The easiest, however, was picking the articles that I was going to use in my paper. I took risks by letting myself write only based on what other people think, and not putting in my own opinion. This is a huge step for me because I am very opinionated.

     The part of my paper I am most proud of is the way I did not tell my opinion. It took a lot more work than I originally thought it would. I also feel like I did decently well in my grammar. However, I feel other parts of my paper still need more work. I feel like I summarized more than I should have, and definitely should work on fixing that and including more quotes from the author than just summarizing the articles. I worked on fixing this by reading over my paper and highlighting the parts that I summarized. I went back and added more quotes instead of paraphrasing.

      My writing process began with reading over the articles again and finding a common theme between them.  I then took notes and began to find specific arguments and statements that the authors presented to support this. I began writing my paper, and tried to stay away from the standard format I learned in high school. I worked really hard to elaborate on what they author said without throwing my opinion in there. I found out quickly that I was not going to have enough for three pages, and went back to read the articles again. Upon finishing my paper, I read over it many times and let my cousin read it, to help fix any apparent flaws. I then took into consideration the points that my peers pointed out. I then revised my paper based upon what everyone involved suggested, and worked to improve my paper the best that I could.