Kabari Mim
Fiqws 10108
HA7
End of The Semester Reflection
This Fall semester in my First-Year Composition FIQWS class in Literature, I was able to develop different strategies that allowed me to build on my writing. Overall, the assignments required for the class, such as the Summary and response essay, Exploratory essay, and Critical Research essay, enhanced my writing experience.
The first major assignment for the class was the Summary and Response essay in which we summarize the theory of “hysterical dissociation” (“splitting of consciousness”) which Freud presents in Lecture 2 and if this theory is applicable to the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. At first, I didn’t understand psychoanalysis and had a lot of reading to understand terms such as Hysteria, repression, and wishful impulse. After reading Lecture 1 I can say that Freud’s most obvious impact was to change the way society thought about and dealt with mental illness. Before psychoanalysis, mental illness was considered ‘organic’; that is, it was thought to come from some kind of deterioration or disease of the brain. But Freud argues that there is more to that and it has to deal with the unconscious mind and conscious mind.
In order to successfully complete the assignment, I used the rhetorical techniques learned in class on how to employ a writing piece within my essay and use summarization to give my audience. This was my first essay for college and I was really nervous. I didn’t know how to start and kept thinking to myself how I could improve my writing from high school. I began reading our first literacy text called “Freud’s five Lectures On Psychoanalysis” by Sigmund Freud. At first, the text was hard to understand because there were a lot of terms we were unfamiliar with. However, during class, we would discuss the text with our peers and our professors. This helped me tremendously because I was able to comprehend and understand the reading. This improved my reading skills and being able to understand what the text says and being able to analyze it in my own words. Some tips that Professor Alyssa recommended were to not summarize the entire lecture but use the information to back up our points and synthesize the information to make strong connections between both texts.
When I got to the final draft, I had to draft an essay first and have it peer-reviewed by two other classmates and receive constructive criticism. You then use constructive feedback to revise and improve your work. It also helps with developing critical thinking skills and making evaluative judgments. Peer review was very helpful because I make a lot of mistakes when I’m writing and my peers being able to help and edit my essays and receive feedback was helpful in improving as a writer.
After submitting my essay. Professor Alyssa pointed out a few issues. She said, “ I follow along and am engaged, but as stated earlier and in-text, you tend to get a bit repetitive instead of really developing your ideas more thoroughly”. One problem I noticed when I write is that I become repetitive or I overwrite and this is an issue that I had to take into consideration when writing my next essay.
The second required assignment for the course was the Exploratory essay. This assignment will continue to introduce me to MLA documentation and citation practices as well as interpret and analyze texts. We had to choose one of the short stories below to explore and illustrate one or more of the psychoanalytic concepts or terms discussed so far, for example, the conflict between “wishful impulses” and the forces of repression [both internal and external], the unconscious, displacement, condensation, etc.
For my exploratory essay, I chose to explore the psychoanalytic concepts found within “ The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe which were repression and wishful impulse. During Professor Von Uhl she focused on how to create citations. We focused on how to properly cite sources in MLA format. We also discussed how Coherence is achieved when sentences and ideas are connected and flow together smoothly. In the video, it said that “topic sentences highlight and synthesize the main point or argument for that particular paragraph” (OWLPurdue). The topic sentence gives the reader a quick gist about what the paragraph should be about and includes your argument or claim. This is important because it sets the tone for the rest of your paragraph and helps the reader understand what your writing is about. Development relates to synthesis because writers are able to create a connection with their ideas from more than one source and clearly analyze their evidence. Synthesis is required to avoid bullshit because according to the Science Weekly Podcast, is “when people clearly do not care about the truth and they communicate without any regard for the truth or established knowledge” (Petrocelli, 2019). When you bullshit something you may say something that isn’t true or established knowledge and so synthesis helps you establish accurate ideas.
Our third assignment was the Critical Research Essay. This time we picked a different short story but more importantly, how the author of the short story comments, critiques, and illustrates society through his or her characters and stories. While drawing upon the psychoanalytic concepts explored in class. I Consider how the ego, superego, and Id of the central characters negotiate their relationships to the demands of their environment (including external sources of authority) and of their own inner drives. This essay required research and two outside sources. With the help of the CCNY Library Databases, I was looking for sources that I can use in my essay. However, I also searched the web and made sure that the articles I picked contained valid information by researching the corresponding author’s credibility. Aside from this, I was able to properly use chosen sources so it would benefit my argument, and to do this I had to correctly cite them, which I did with the guidance of my professor.
Professor Von Uhl required us to understand the Beam Method by Bizurd. I explored and analyzed a variety of rhetorical situations when identifying the sources I would be employing. Citing sources and using them in general helped to add credibility to my argument since it was supporting evidence for my thesis. According to Joseph Bizup, BEAM stands for: Background, Exhibit, Argument, and Method. We looked into one of the texts called “Grammar, Rhetoric, and Style” by Hulst. . In the text, Hulst says “Throughout the rest of this essay, I will present several examples of writing, and I will look at what each author has chosen to put into their sentence slots and why they made those choices” (Hulst 92). Hulst explains how grammar is much more than the rules we’ve been taught like spelling mistakes and language but rather, grammar can be used rhetorically with an understanding of the writing situation. Overall using grammar to influence a piece of writing’s style, rather than focusing on the correctness of the grammar.
In between assignments, there were also discussion posts and reflection essays we had to do corresponding to specific assignments. These assignments helped me better understand the reading we did in class. The reflection allowed me to identify rhetorical techniques within my own essay so I can either improve on or learn from them for future references such as this one.
Overall, all these assignments and hard work have aided me to become a better writer by employing rhetoric within my writings in order to strengthen, validate, and add significance to my thesis. With the help of my peers and both Professors I definitely learned a lot and was able to understand the importance of peer review, MLA citation, and making sure my writing was cohesive.
