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Green, Meghan

ENGL 115

Professor Beadle

9 December 2019

Reflection Essay

As an incoming freshman, English 115 was my first college course completely dedicated

to writing at a university level. Over the course of the semester I wrote three essays: “Arguments

for Happiness”, “Searching for Meaning in a Meaningless World”, and “Before Green Eggs and

Ham”. I utilized the feedback that I received from my instructor for the first two essays to

improve each subsequent essay. Around the semester's conclusion, I used my instructor’s

feedback to guide my revisions for my first two essays. Although I believe my writing has

improved overall, my writing has drastically improved in three key areas: essay structure,

analytical development, and writing an arguable thesis.

The way I structured my essays greatly improved over the course of the semester;

specifically after Project Space, where my essay structure, or lack thereof, was the topic of the

majority of my feedback. When I initially wrote my essay for Project Space, I organized my

essay in a way that would only grant me three body paragraphs. Considering I had to argue for or

against three different authors and their individual use of three different rhetorical strategies, I do

not know why I thought three paragraphs would satisfy the large number of points I needed to

discuss. As previously mentioned, the feedback I received for my first essay centered on its poor

structure. For my writing, this was a wake up call; I had never questioned a simple five

paragraph essay structure that had been drilled into my brain since middle school, but I was at a
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university now, and my writing needed to adjust. When writing my next two essays, I made sure

I only discussed one point per paragraph. The clarity of the initial essays I wrote for Project Text

and Project Media is drastically different than my initial essay for Project Space; this is all due to

a simple change in my essay structure. I applied this critique when revising my Project Space

essay and the number of body paragraphs doubled instantly.

My improvement with the development of ideas in my essays is mainly illustrated

between the initial Project Text essay and the revised version. In my Project Text essay, I often

would state a premise in my argument as fact without actually developing its individual idea or

making it clear to readers first. For example, when I received feedback on my Project Text essay,

my instructor pointed out that I stated Gregor had a “provider-centered identity” without any

evidence at all. When I revised this idea, I ended up adding textual evidence and three sentences

of analysis. It’s interesting for me to see how some ideas that I would glance over in my writing

actually required way more attention than I was granting.

Writing a thesis that is arguable is a concept that I have ingrained in my mind after taking

this course. For all three essays, I submitted proposals with a thesis that wasn’t argumentative.

After receiving feedback on my proposals, with lots of drafting thereafter, I submitted essays

with strong theses that could be argued. I feel that writing a thesis that is arguable is common

knowledge, yet when it comes to actually drafting one it is easy to (at least for me) get stuck on

the topic and position without giving a clear rationale. However, the steps I took to get from each

working thesis to its finalized one, shortened with each chronological essay. Shortening the

writing process is not a sign of growth, but the practice of drafting these theses focused and

refined the writing process for me, which in turn made my writing more effective.
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Reflecting on my past essays this semester has really demonstrated my growth as a writer

to myself. Throughout highschool, my writing remained stagnant; If I wrote an essay that had

five paragraphs and a thesis, it was a good essay that did not need drastic improvement. Now

with the knowledge of an entire semester of university writing, I know my fixed mindset

regarding writing was foolish. In fact, when I revised my Project Space essay, I laughed to

myself at some of the choices I made which had appeared entirely serious just three short months

before. Simple changes regarding the development of ideas, essay structures, and strong theses

have significantly refined my writing as a whole. I am much more confident in my writing and

will utilize these skills in all future writing. However, I believe the most important takeaway

from this course, beyond essay structures and theses, is the understanding that my writing has the

possibility for infinite growth.