Jax Xhabrahimi
11/15/22
Ms. Rodwell
ENGL 11000
Mid-term Self-Reflection Essay
Throughout the first half of the semester, I turned in two writing assignments. One being my Creative Nonfiction Essay; the intended purpose for this assignment being to highlight three or more elements that contribute to my identity. With the intended audience being people that share the same common interest that makes up my identity; relationships with family and friends, sports, and music. To accomplish this, the genre that this paper was written in was an autobiography essay. The second assignment being my Exploratory Essay; this assignment is a research paper focusing on the theme of the class; media and identity. I had the option to use my CNF to help narrow my topic for this paper or conduct new research. My purpose for this paper is to find media and the relationships with family and friends influence on adolescents’ identity development. During the writing process, I used a couple of strategies to help construct my thoughts and how I wanted to form my essays.
In the beginning of the Creative Nonfiction Essay writing process, to help jump into it I had gone to talk to a peer about the assignment. Which allowed me to brainstorm on what elements of my identity that I was going to talk about, rather than free writing or any other writing strategy to help generate ideas because I found it easier for me. After picking the main contributors to my identity that I wanted to write about, now I was left to explain each factor’s impact and then to structure this paper. So before jumping into a draft I made an outline, by starting an outline it helped me form what each section was going to be about and the order of them. From there I was able to begin filling out the outline, starting with the introduction. Which included a working draft of a topic sentence and my thesis statement. Next was the sections, there were four sections for each factor. Each of them I included key words to help guide me in the direction that I wanted to focus on. Instead of finishing the outline with a conclusion, I jumped straight into a draft because then after writing I was then able to restate my thesis statement circle back to main points made throughout the essay that would be included in the conclusion.
The writing process for the Exploratory Essay was different compared to the CNF but I still implemented the same strategies. Unlike the Creative Nonfiction Essay, I begin with doing research on my research topic. After getting some background information, I knew my research was not complete, but I first wanted to create an outline to help me figure out what research was missing. So, then I would go back and forth with my outline and the document where I stored my research, constantly updating them until I could begin my draft. Once I had a complete outline with information backing up on my topic, I began writing my first draft for the peer review that was coming up. After the peer review, I had gotten feedback from my professor saying that my thesis statement was an opinion and that I should revise it to have a neutral stance. And that my paper was filled with quotes, when I should paraphrase them because, “The audience should read your words instead.” After receiving feedback, what I did to get started implementing them into my final draft was I created a new outline to help me paraphrase the quotes I included in my original outline and draft. Which allowed me to keep everything organized because all the information that I intended to use was now all in the original outline. So now I don’t have to bother with looking through the document with all my research and just focus on paraphrasing. What I did to revise my thesis statement to have a neutral stance was I removed the phrase “… may have a greater influence…” which shows that I was supporting one side over the other. The takeaway from both the Creative Nonfiction and Exploratory Essay’s writing process was the usefulness of creating an outline to help with structuring both papers. And seeking out help from peers, which allowed me to generate ideas and almost create a plan of my essay verbally before doing any typing for both essays. Then getting feedback from the peer review benefited me because I was able to get multiple pairs of eyes on a draft of my paper telling what worked and needed to be improved before going into my final draft.
