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Ryan Ouellette

Ashely Humphries

ENC 1101

22 Apr 2015

ENC 1101 Reflection

Stepping foot into ENC 1101, I hadn’t the slightest clue on what to expect from the

course. I never considered myself a decent writer and English was one my least favorite class all

throughout school. Consequently, I tended to stick to the honors level classes rather than the

more challenging AP level. Since I attended boot camp in summer, I missed out on half the

school year which made me feel a little bit like an outsider. With all of this combined, it led to

my woeful unpreparedness of the course and a lack of will to improve my writing. As I go

through my personal narrative, visual/textual analysis, and anti-ad, I will reflect on each essay

and how my overall skill as a writer subsequently improved.

The first essay assigned was a digital history narrative. The goal was to tell a narrative,

obviously, about how a specific piece or pieces of media influenced or impacted my life. I was

never keen on writing, as stated before, and therefore never established a strong brainstorming

technique. Right away I was lost upstream without a paddle and no help in sight. So instead of

planning any type of outline or plan on my narrative about the impact movies had on me, I dove

head first into writing. After several hours of typing away at my keyboard, I finally thought I had

a rough draft that wouldn’t completely embarrass me. That, however, would not be the case as

during our first peer review session my partner pointed out a numerous amount of issues with it.

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At the end of the session, it was determined that the draft lacked organization, any sort of

transitions, and a definable thesis. As this was our first stab at writing, I didn’t let these critiques

weigh down on me. For the second draft, I attempted to correct these errors to the best of my at-

the-time knowledge. I rearranged my paragraphs in the hopes of improving my organization and

added, what I thought, were good enough transitions between the movies of Saving Private

Ryan, Black Hawk Down, and Lone Survivor. The results of my second draft fared better, if only

marginally. After affirming that I now had a clear thesis and improved organization, I drove onto

my last draft before the final version. With some guidance from my teacher-student review

session and a few tweaks, I felt confident enough to write a somewhat solid final paper.

With the knowledge I gained throughout the drafting experience I was pretty confident

that I did a rather decent job this time around. My writing skill was still poorly developed and I

wasn’t expecting a spectacular grade. When, however, I received my graded paper, it wasn’t the

grade that shocked me, although it was only a painful C, it was the amount of feedback and

remarks that stunned me. Up until that point, I never had a teacher that went that in depth to

show were my work lacked and how to improve it. And although my pride was severely

wounded, I knew that my revised final would be well improved. After reviewing the remarks and

essay as a whole, I started to remove and add huge chunks of it. I made sure that revised version

stuck to the original prompt, was focused, and included well thought out analyses. Grades aside,

I was thoroughly satisfied with where my writing began and ended for this paper.

The second essay assigned was a visual/textual analysis, and the one I struggled the most

with. Most of friends took AP English courses throughout high school and from my

understanding analysis played a large role. While, in theory, I had a modest idea about what it

was, I still had no clue on how to apply it to a piece of work or incorporate into an essay. Even

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after we went over it in class multiple times, I was still hopefully lost. Once again I gave the

writing the old college try and attempted at a shot in the dark. By this point though I had chosen

a brainstorming process and had most of my ideas, so I wasn’t completely helpless. After some

very helpful feedback from my peers, I knew which direction I wanted to take my analysis on the

relationship between the two fictional characters, the Master Chief and Cortana, from the game

series Halo.

After tweaking the thesis, some analyses, and adding new content, my second and third

rough drafts were, in my opinion, ready for the teacher-student review session. After receiving

the advice I did, I was reluctant to actually implement it into my paper. It was suggested that I

combine a couple of segments into a condensed version to allow for more in depth analyses

focused on fewer sources. If I were to do this though, it would cut out a large chunk of my word

count and as foolish as I was, I decided to ignore it. This would prove very foolish, in the end, as

my final paper was figuratively torn apart and given my worst grade of the semester, a C-. I

would not forsake the advice a second time as I practically started my revision from scratch. I

condensed what needed to be condensed, removed anything that didn’t support the hypothesis,

and went further in depth with my analyses. And once again I felt as if my end product was a

strong improvement over the original draft.

The third essay assigned was an anti-advertisement piece. At this point in the semester I

was a lot more confident with my writing ability than in the beginning. The issues that plagued

me during the first two essays were no longer an issue. This time around, the main challenge I

face was trying to find an interesting advertisement to focus my work around. After jotting a few

different ad ideas, I landed on one that lobbied for better gun control in the United States. The

next challenge was more of a creative one as opposed to a writing one. I had a vestige of where I

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wanted to take my anti-ad and after many hours of trying out different ideas, I finally had my

design.

Following our first peer review session and my group’s reaction to the ad, I saw what was

okay and what required improvement. After my second and third drafts were reviewed and the

feedback I received from each was noted, I felt ready to compose my final piece. Just as the last

two though, this one was heavily marked up and critiqued, but did garner a C+, my unimpressive

highest grade of the semester. Throughout my time reviewing the essay and critiques I had,

established a plan to improve it tremendously. I changed the anti-ad to align it more with my

thesis as well as removed and added analyses to allow it to flow better. As with the previous two

essays, I believe this one shows great growth from the beginning of the assignment to the end.

My time spent in ENC 1101 was definitely not what I expected it to be. I anticipated a

rather boring class with an easy work load, as per my experience in other English classes. The

difficulty quickly sobered me up and humbled my rather large pride. Dealing with the remarks

and critiques was probably the hardest part of the class, personally. I have always been a very

prideful man, almost to the point of fault, and 1101 has certainly helped me over-come that issue,

if only slightly. I actually enjoy writing now and feel confident that my current skill will carry

me throughout my subsequent English classes and life in general. I am incredibly thankful for

my wonderful instructor and the help she provided along the way. It’s unquestionably been an

eye opening semester of school for me.