Mya Hankes
ENG110
Professor Brod
November 2nd 2020
- The most notable strength that I found in my essay was the use of my voice throughout it. I used direct pronouns while mixing in some indirect sentences that underlyingly displayed my voice. Using DFW’s and Blooms arguments together intertwined with my voice was able to highlight it in my essay. It showed I had a deep understanding of both texts and can integrate my own extended ideas in with it. I also pulled in personal anecdotes into my writing as a way to show my voice and find relatability with readers. If other students were to read this I believe that they would agree with the struggles I described. One paragraph in my essay that resonates with me as my strongest use of voice is,
“What DFW means is despite our want to be good, empathetic people, it is hardwired in us to instinctively care about ourselves first. When you think about it beyond surface level, it makes perfect sense. Everything you are doing in real time is from the perspective of yourself and your own thoughts. You can’t experience it from the person next to you, your mom, or your best friend. Therefore, we have to cognitively choose to try and relate to the emotions of the people around us or sometimes, those globally. On an everyday basis we would all like to say we are those good and empathetic people, but inconsicities in life is where most of us hit our breaking point. We micro analyze every interaction, movement, and word spoken for something to be irritated about.”
In this paragraph I display my voice and a real life example, but without the use of personal pronouns. I think that being able to indirectly use your voice is an important strength within your writing, and something I feel I do well with. Voice is something I focus my papers around. I sound personable and relatable in my writing which makes it easier to understand and read through. Overall, voice is a consistent and strong aspect in my writing but something I want to even further improve on.
2. I think my writing process since high school has changed drastically. I am more confident in my abilities and don’t shy away from expressing myself in my writing. There is also more motivation that goes into my college level writing. In highschool, we were never able to read very liberal or overall interesting pieces of literature. This heavily damaged my writing skills and “want” to write. My papers were never something I felt that proud of because I would slack the whole process. In this class, I believe that what I’ve read has had a huge influence on my writing process.The pieces we read are interesting and actually pertain to our current lives. I now read thoroughly and annotate things without feeling like I’m being held against my will. Another aspect I’ve noticed is that my drafts are complete pieces and something I feel like I can edit without having to rewrite them. This is a huge difference from what my writing used to be. My highschool writing had been lifeless and unmotivated; something that I probably wrote the night before it’s due date. This meant it rarely ever was revised or had any heart put into it. Being at UNE now, I feel like I am able to define myself through writing and be confident in my words.
3. I took my revision process more seriously in my second paper than I did in my first. My first paper of the year was fluff in my opinion, the first college level writing I had ever done. You would think this would make me care more, but in the moment I was so anxious to produce “good” writing that I wrote it in one big final draft. This meant that I factored in little to none of the feedback that had been given to me in my original draft (something that was barely complete). Although it turned out I wrote an A worthy paper, a large part of the writing process was left out. With my second paper, I took this road completely differently. With the confidence I had from my first paper, my motivation for the second was skyrocketed. I wrote two drafts of my second paper and thoroughly read through the advice from my peers. The advice I got from my peer revision actually influenced me, even with being a part of the writing process I previously thought was useless. Overall, my body paragraphs were most influenced by the advice I got from peer editing. It strengthened my paragraphs but also included ideas I didn’t come up with myself.
4. The aspect of essay composition I’d like to spend more class time on is local revision. I think I do well overall globally when I have to critique my work (such as adding new ideas, quotes, etc.) but local revision is where my mistakes go unnoticed. I struggle when it comes to proper grammar and sometimes my sentence structure. My words can ramble in paragraphs into a grey and indistinguishable area that makes it hard to understand my point. Along with that means I tend to add punctuation or grammar where it’s not needed or forget to add it all together. This something I hope that we can further explore in class so I’m able to improve the weak spot in my writing.
5. “Everything you are doing in real time is from the perspective of yourself and your own thoughts. You can’t experience it from the person next to you, your mom, or your best friend. Therefore, we have to cognitively choose to try and relate to the emotions of the people around us or sometimes, those globally.”
I think that this is one of the strongest claims made within my paper. Although I used it above for voice, I want to reiterate the strength of it. I think this quote directly ties my own voice in with the main argument of DFW’s commencement speech. It includes his main ideas of empathy but in my own voice and understanding. This shows an understanding of not only the reading but the larger point of the prompt. It’s directly related to my argument and (pretty much in it’s own way) summarizes my main idea. I also like it’s placement within my paper because it allows me to expand more.
6. Essay 1: Although Konnikova emphasizes the difficulty of online connection, Phelps-Roper’s story makes me believe that online connections can be stronger than human.
Essay 2: I believe that implementing empathy into our everyday interactions is vital in order to live in a current college environment.
I don’t think there is much of a difference but a consistency in my thesis statements. Personally, I like broader statements because it allows the elaboration of more ideas into the body paragraphs. In my writing I usually include multiple ideas that intertwine rather than have one main focus. When I have a narrowed thesis it makes it harder for me to write my paper. Liking broad claims can also make thesis sentences difficult to write because if it is too general, there is no point of your argument. Overall I have confidence in my ability to write thesis statements in my personal academic writing.
