Scheper 1

Sjoerd Scheper

Instructor: Becky Hsu

College Writing R1A

5 December 2019

Reflecting on my experience in College Writing R1A

The mindset and thoughts I came into this class with:

When I signed up for this course in the summer, be an easy high grade was what I

envisioned. However, this is not what I experienced during this semester. Essay writing at

Berkeley was not necessarily harder than I expected, but it was a lot stricter on the grading than I

had experienced during IB in The Netherlands. Looking back, I can only conclude that I was

overconfident in my skills coming into this class. Three years of essay writing at high school,

made me think that I knew how to write, analyze and integrate evidence into my text. The truth

is, my analysis was way too superficial. After reading the book once, I started to write right

away. Time management was not my main strength and I postponed reading, analysis and

writing to the last minute possible. In rare cases, where I had time for one revision as I finished

the essay a day before the due date, but most of the time that would not be the case. The content

of my essays suffered from poor time management, for example, I would barely use the actual

book or source for supporting my arguments. Consequently, quotes were a weak point for me.

Quotes consisted of an entire block of text that would sort of support my arguments, instead of

integrating small parts into my own writing to let it flow. In addition, I would just let the quote

do the speaking and would never analyze the quote to show why it supported my argument.

During the process of writing, the main problem was that I never realized my shortcomings.

My progression through the essays:

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During the course of this semester, I started to slowly realize how little I truly knew about

essay writing; the discovery of new techniques and information on text analysis pointed out my

lack of knowledge. In my Synthesis paper, I felt like the expansion of my knowledge started to

have a recognizable effect on my writing. My understanding how to integrate a quote into my

text and how to analyze it increased; furthermore, I realized I should start way earlier on my

writing and revisions. Better time management resulted from the fact that I did not know how to

write a synthesis paper. Research on the essentials of writing a synthesis paper and the multiple

revisions, integrating the excellent feedback received, were necessary to figure out how to write

a good synthesis paper. The additional work put in, resulted in an essay I felt good about when I

handed it in. The feeling of being proud when handing in a paper and enhanced quality of work

was something, I tried to pursue for all essays I handed in after that. Luckily, my improvements

were visible in my literary and visual analysis papers.

The literary analysis paper was a paper was my biggest achievement, which left me very

satisfied. Even though I wrote the essay in one sitting, during editing I really questioned whether

each paragraph fit to my thesis and referred back to the text to substantiate of check my claims.

The fact that I put more time into reading and analyzing the book that was the topic of my essay,

made the improvement possible.

With the visual analysis essay, I felt, I handed in the best essay I could produce with my

current knowledge. Based on feedback and personal study of the subject, I performed a total of 4

different revisions and during each revision I would change a large part of the text, but when

checking it again a while later I was not satisfied with it and see that improvements could be

included. The majority of my work focused on clarity and logic of my supporting arguments, to

make sure they backed up my thesis and well-built and logical manner. During this essay, I
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definitely performed the most analyzing and research during my reading phase. For example, I

watched the movie once, then devised a thesis statement and supporting arguments. Afterwards, I

watched the movie again to ensure my thesis and arguments lined up with the movie. In addition,

I made small adjustments to my thesis and arguments to truly align them with the facts depicted

in the movie. My sister and roommate reviewed my previous essay, and both indicated that I

wrote quite short and basic sentences. Taking the feedback to heart, I found myself trying to truly

address this problem in the visual analysis essay and I think it turned out well.

What I have learned from this course:

During my time in this course, I learned three important basics about essay writing; to

analyze, integrate and structure an essay doing research. My skills have improved during this

semester, but I still have a long way to go before I am a good essay writer. At the start of this

course I had a Dunning-Kruger effect going on; this effect is an effect that happens when one is

overconfident in his ability, because he thinks he know everything about a certain subject. In

reality, what he knows about the subject is only the tip of the iceberg and there is a lot that still

needs exploring about that subject.

I learned about my overconfidence during the course of this semester; it was for the better

that this happened during my first semester at Berkeley, as it opened my eyes and made me

realize that there is still a lot I could learn. The point where I started to realize is also the point

where my writing started to improve. Consequently, at this point I started to feel prouder and

happier with my writing. Even though I feel that I have grasped the basics of true writing, I will

challenge myself to also achieve skills beyond the basics of essay writing.