The hardest part of Composition II this semester was getting the motivation to start the essay. The first semester I was more eager to do the writing prompts and often turned them in a week in advance, but this semester that hasn’t been the case. Personally, I was more detached from the writing because I wasn’t writing from experience, so it took days of deliberation and reading to get an idea of the subject that I wanted to write. The first part of the process was simply choosing an issue to write about, which I did at random; typically choosing the one I felt had the most information to accompany it. After that, I would sit around and just “let the words come to me”.  Often, I would ruminate to find how the topic was related to me or what I might have seen going on surrounding the topic. From point my goal was to at least one thousand words on the paper without quotes or statistics because that helped to get my point across while still being concise. Before, I would go way over the word limit and have to cut words out but the problem I faced was that most words, phrases, and quotes were vital to the success of the paper. I tried to reverse my approach to see if the results would be different, and they were.

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            So, I understood why Professor Chapman would be angry with me when I turned in my quoteless first drafts, but I continued to do it because it was helping to make a better paper that I only had to fill with facts. I tried to make the first draft grammatically flawless, so I could funnel in the statistics to support my ideas. I took this same approach with both papers and it worked out well for me.

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             I probably could’ve been better at engaging the reader directly into the paper and using more argumentative language to convey my points. Things like that come with more time and training, specifically on how to write in those manners. I don’t feel like the writing was bad per say, but I don’t think that someone would read it and think that they’re reading the New York Times either. That’s my goal, for my writing to look as professional as any other leading writer but not because I want to be a journalist. Rather, I love to compete, and I always want to be the best at what I do.

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            When reading my first essay, I feel like it was supported with strong facts and statistics, but it didn’t give a clear-cut defense of what I was saying. I think that I could have argued my point better to sway the reader into believing what I was saying. The piece worked well together though, and it flowed together well. It shows a raw potential for what I can do which makes me eager to refine the talent that I have. The hardest part of this essay was finding recent data to support my claims. There was an abundance of information, but I wanted data from the past ten years, because it is more aligned with what happens current day. I got in my own way starting off because I took so long to start it which only made it critical that I got it done. After I physically started typing the paper the words flowed because I understood some of the problems dealing with taking the SAT. I wanted to stay unbiased and use my statistics to support my claims which was also easy. Because I am a communication major, we often work with databases, so I knew exactly where to look to get the information I needed for support.

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            My second essay was a little harder because I didn’t find any common ground with the topic of water pollution. In the grand scheme of things, I care but I don’t really care. I want our water to be clean and the fish to live, but it’s not much for me to do single handedly. Which totally contradicts what I said in my paper. I just feel like I’m spiritually unconnected because it’s not something that I deal with in my everyday life. I don’t fish, swim, or go in boats so the health of the water doesn’t even cross my mind. While writing the paper I struggled to find three inherently different problems that polluted large bodies of water. Of course, you have plastics, but most people don’t have off hand knowledge of what pollutes our water. So, it helped when doing the research because while finding problems to write about, I also found the statistics that coincide.  This paper on water pollution helped me to gather skills when writing about something that you don’t want to write about. It helped me to focus and find intrinsic motivation to get the piece completed.

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            Looking back on the first semester, it’s easy to recognize that I became a much more careful writer. My error logs got significantly shorter with an average of five total errors in the paper. It also took me longer to write papers than it had before, and that could be attributed to the subject. I improved with writing to a word limit, which isn’t really a bad thing, but it does train you to have to find more concise ways to get your point across. I didn’t struggle with finding or using sources because it was something that I was already doing even before it was required. I think my greatest struggle was grading my peers’ papers because we could never get them to everyone in the group. All in all, this year was a great experience. I enjoyed class with Professor Chapman, but not so much the writing. I look forward to using the tools that I have been given and hope that people recognize the great foundation that I have built.