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Andrew Martin

English 115

Jon Beadle

14 December, 2017

Float like a Butterfly, Write like a Bee

When it comes to writing, the words you use within your text can be more than powerful.

Your words can float across the page, just like a butterfly floats in the wind, and make the piece

of writing flow very smoothly, which gives the reader a sense of direction. Although it is im-

portant to make your paper float as such, your writing must be direct and have a central theme or

argument. This part of your essay must be precise and sharp like a bees stinger in a sense that

your argument must be organized and analyzed well. The use of different strategies can make

your writing more effective and, in most cases, gives it a stronger argument. In English 115, Ap-

proaches to University Writing, with professor Jon Beadle, we learned how to create effective

writing while focusing on both content and form. This class emphasizes the importance of logi-

cal thinking, clear expression, essay structure, and the use and analysis of evidence in creating

the most effective argument possible. Also, this concept shows the author the importance of

quality rather than quantity, meaning that the length of the paper doesn't always determine

whether or not it is a well organized essay. The theme of this years class is Monsters, where we

discussed texts on the topic of monsters and use our own experiences to create a strong argument

in our writing. Coming into this class, I was intimidated because of the idea of taking my first

college level writing course, and it showed in my writing. As the semester continued, I devel-

oped my skills in the organization of my essay and the support for the analysis of my evidence.
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The first skill I have improved on in the duration of my time in this class is the organiza-

tion and creativity of my essays. In my Project Space essay I wrote about how college writing is

a space that can be monstrous because students may fear failing to reach the professors expecta-

tions and how that can dissuade students from communicating their own struggles to the profes-

sor. The organization of my ideas were unclear and erratic in placement and Professor Beadle

said that I should make my thesis more concise. After reading through my essay once more af-

ter I have read the feedback he gave me, I could see what he meant because my essay really had

no sensible direction. I repeated the same ideas multiple times because I struggled to find the cre-

ativity to relate the topic of a monstrous space to college writing courses, and I even struggled to

create an interesting title as a hook to grab the attention of the reader. My body paragraphs did

not clearly relate back to my thesis and most of my arguments were not useful. I took the feed-

back from my professor and improved the organization of my next essay, Project Text, by creat-

ing an interesting title, Change of Godzilla: Metaphorical and Political, and I followed the or-

der of what I stated in my thesis and relating the body paragraphs back to the thesis. Each body

paragraph in this essay related back to the topic at hand with new concepts to expand the mind of

the reader and not give them the feeling of tunnel vision, which is only being able to see a certain

topic one way rather than from an opened mind. I was able to create an an essay that I believed

my words floated on the page in one continuous smooth paper, and support my argument pre-

cisely. In doing so, I was able to boost my grade up In the category of my response to the assign-

ment from a 8 to a 9, which was one way I was able to improve my writing on the topic of organ-

ization and creativity. Another way I improved from this course is having better analysis for the

support of my arguments.
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In my Project Space essay, my professor constantly marked off parts of my essay where

my analysis of a quote was only superficial rather than giving the evidence a deeper meaning. By

this I mean that the evidence of quotes I used in this essay were not analyzed enough to be

clearly relatable to my thesis and, in some cases, not relatable at all. Most of the feedback on this

essay was how does this relate to your thesis or clearly explain this quote, which showed my

that instead of giving a summary of my evidence, I must take that evidence and analyze the dif-

ferent ways it relates to my topic. I realized that I needed to make a clear connection from my ev-

idence to my argument because not everyone will think the same way I do, so its important to an-

alyze my evidence to the point where it is clear to the reader as well. I took this feedback and fo-

cused on analyzing my evidence on the next essay. In Project Text, I was able to give better anal-

ysis of my evidence and quotes to make the connection to my thesis clear. My ideas in Project

Text were interesting enough to the point where I actually have something to say and I could ex-

pand on what the quotes mean in this specific context rather than providing a vague explanation.

When expanding my ideas on this essay, I felt as if my analysis was solid and flowed like a but-

terfly in the mind. I was able to see improvement in the topic of the support and analysis of my

evidence because I was able to increase my score from a 7 to an 8. Although this is a little jump,

it is good to see that I am improving at a steady pace.

As a writer, I have improved in many areas where I have felt weak prior to taking this

class specifically on the subjects of organization and good analysis. Although the improvements

I exemplified were subtle, the real importance is that I am improving, because that shows that

with time and effort, my writing will become my best work. As a freshman, I have a long way to

go. There will always be room for improvement no matter what age you are or what grade you

are in. You learn something new everyday and you can continue to develop your skills beyond
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what you think is possible. With practice and hard work, your words will float like a butterfly,

and your argument with be concise and sharp like the stinger of a bee.