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Brenden Reyes
Professor Ditch
English 115
6 December 2017
For the semester I took for English 115, I felt that I improved a lot in my English and
writing skills, and the topic of gender made it much more interesting. As I look back at my
previous work, I can really see the growth I have from the beginning of the school year to now. It
is like I saw myself transition from a high school graduate to an actual college student. This
improvement cannot be more evident than from my two essays for Project Space and Project
One of the biggest improvements from Project Space to Project Text is my overall
attitude as a writer. In all honestly, I thought that Project Space was going to get a really good
grade, due to the fact that I scored well in my Project Space Proposal. That high score led me to
take on a more cocky approach towards the essay, as I felt that if I had a score that high, then that
meant that there was no improvement to be done. Literally, if we compare the proposal to the
final draft essay I originally turned in, then it would look almost identical. Personally, Project
Space represents the lack of effort I had towards my writing. This minimal effort reflected on my
final grade for Project Space which ended up being 69%, and after reflecting on the grade, it was
not really a surprise. It just looked unfinished as I did not follow a lot of the requirements. I
lacked proper MLA format, varying quotes, a clear argument, and I did not reach the page count.
I remember being so confident too as I turned it in, but when my friend told me about the right
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page count, I knew I was in trouble. This was unacceptable and displayed laziness, and it was not
a great way to start off my college career. This blunder of an essay served as an example of what
not to do when I write my future essays, and I made sure to remember that as I was writing my
What made Project Text different from Project Space was that instead of using evidence
from personal recordings, we analyzed the book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie
Society. Because it was a book, I was able to come up with more interesting ideas to analyze.
This is an example of how I improved more as a writer, because with more material to work with
I was able to create more creative perspectives. For example, I took a quote from Jason Del
Gandios book Rhetoric for Radicals and stretched the meaning of it so that it would fit to the
point I was trying to prove. This displays how as a writer I can think outside the box and use
information that should not work, and make it work. Another way I improved is how I connect
generic and broad for interpretation, meaning it did not have a strong, solid idea to grasp.
However, with Project Text I better developed my skills in pinpointing specific topics. For
example, I once again used a quote from Del Gandio on how social norms restrain behavior,
action, and thought, and related it to how the character Juliet breaks that. I explain why she
breaks the social norm in detail and the reasoning for it, while also explaining how this action is
portrayed in the perspective of gender. Because I created a very specific topic, I was able to
Another way I improved was with my use of detail and lead-ins to my quotes. Because I
am analyzing a book, I had to provide some form context on a scene so that the quote I use for
evidence makes sense. That meant I had to outline these sometimes complex scenes into these
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short summaries. Being able to capture the essence of a scene was really tough for me in Project
Space as I felt I did not find a way to capture how I really felt at the moment of those
experiences. However, with Project Space I believe I was able to capture the key feelings and
emotions of the scene so that the evidence I do use carried more weight to it. In other words,
because I was able to provide better context with a detailed summarization, it overall made my
Another sign of improvement goes towards how I created a more clear argument and
used proper evidence to support it. This claim could be supported by the amount of marks each
essay had. For Project Space, my professor pointed out that I was missing a clear argument and
that some of my statements, such as saying how I was feminine while playing Dance Dance
Revolution, was unclear and did not go into detail why that is. I made sure to correct that mistake
and for Project Text I made sure that I would be more descriptive on those claims. The
recognition of this problem proved to work out, as my essay for Project Text had no markings
regarding that problem. Instead, really the only mistakes I made was for grammar and MLA, and
I think the fact that I made fewer mistakes on Project Text than on Project Space supports the
Space and Project Text. This can be self-evident from the difference in scores I received for
them, which was a 69% for Project Space and a 95% for Project Text, but it goes much deeper
than that. It displays my progress as a writer as it shows how I improved my faults and got a
much better grade. Taking this class allowed me to better myself in my writing as well as give
me more insight to the complexities of gender. Exploring the ways we discussed gender in my
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own life and in the book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society were interesting
topics to analyze and hone my skills, and I agree that it helped me improve as a writer.