George Rosales

ENG 11000 Freshman Composition

Prof. Lisa Diomande
Reflection of Works
05/18/2015
Freshman Composition Reflection Spring 2015
For my freshman composition class in the spring of 2015, I wrote five major
essays: a reflective narrative, a summary and response essay, a critical analysis essay, an
expository essay, and a research paper. The theme of this class was identity; who we are, what
makes up a persons identity, who creates it, and how do we create it. Before writing these
papers, we performed several reading and writing exercises in class using articles related to the
theme of identity.
The reflective narrative essay that I wrote was about my exit from college classes
on the first day of classes and entry to the hospital for quite some time. I was demoralized that I
would have to miss out on the first semester of college in order to remember, and would have to
play catch up. I also reflected on how much I was a lazy person and I would also not take care of
myself; I realized that I needed to change my ways as I am now a college student with bigger
responsibilities. I enjoyed writing this essay the most because there were no constraints or
restrictions, and I was able to express myself freely. No outside information was required, as all
the information I needed came from me. This essay explored my own identity, and how it
changed after my visit to the hospital.
The summary and response essay that I wrote was based on the article A Report
From Occupied Territory by James Baldwin, regarding police brutality and the poor treatment
of African Americans in Harlem during the time of the civil rights movement. This essay proved
to be one of the most difficult, as I have been accustomed to skimming through articles to find
the main idea(s). I learned that I will not be able to get away with skimming articles, especially at

the college level. Instead, I need to really read and pay attention to all the details and figure out
what exactly the author of the text is trying to say. It was especially true for this article because it
was lengthy and full of details. In fact, on my first draft, I missed out on what Baldwin was
trying to say about police brutality. This essay explored how the identity of African Americans
was being dehumanized by police brutality.
The expository essay that I wrote was about how people may argue that
differences in religion can lead to conflict, using the Holocaust and September 11 attacks as
historical examples. I didnt really enjoy writing this essay because even though there was a lot
of information that I could discuss about, I do not like writing about sensitive ideas that people
may take offense to (religion). Additionally, I did not like being restricted to the theme of
identity. However, I did learn a better method of finding more academic articles for my future
research. Instead of just entering my key words on Google or Wikipedia, I use the colleges
database, which, when I use it, provides me with articles and e-books that I can use for my
research, which is what I did for this paper. One of the things I needed to work on was my
citation in MLA format.
The critical analysis essay that I wrote was based on the article The Troll
Slayer, by Rebecca Mead. This article was about the harassment a classics professor, Mary
Beard, at the University of Cambridge, faced while promoting feminism for young women
around the world, especially in the United Kingdom. This essay was similar to the Summary and
Response essay in which I needed to critically read the article and figure out what Mead was
saying, using Beard as an example for her message. I ran into the same problem in the Summary
and Response, where I just skimmed the article and didnt carefully read for my first draft. This
paper explored the identity of women, feminism and how women shouldnt take the harassment
from men, but instead, use it as motivation to strive for the best.

The final paper I wrote for this class was the research paper. For this paper, I
talked about gender and socioeconomics, more specifically, why gender wage discrimination is
occurring and how women are dealing with them. I used some of the skills that were needed
from the other four essays. I needed to find academic sources using the schools database, read
my sources carefully instead of skimming them, thinking critically about why gender wage
discrimination is occurring, and offering my own thoughts and opinions. However, I did not like
being restricted to the theme of identity. At the same time, there was much to discuss with
respect to gender wage discrimination in the modern world.
The reflective narrative, summary and response, expository, and critical analysis
essay all built up towards my research paper. I used some of the concepts of each paper and
incorporated them into my research paper, except the topic of my research paper was different
from my other papers. The biggest takeaways from this course was carefully and critically
reading all the texts given to me, finding academic sources in your research, and properly citing
those sources.