Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

From UMassWiki

After writing my first college essay, I became confident in my writing and much more aware of grammar and organization. As I moved on to the second and third essay, I felt I was rushed because I was not given as much time as I would have liked. This forced me to scrutinize the essay more closely when I had the chance.

The second essay I wrote was based on Bordo’s essay, “Hunger as Ideology”. I found this a very challenging essay because unlike the first one, I was not writing about myself, rather the whole American society and the women in it. I also had to base it on an essay that was already written, and therefore I was limited in creativity. Even though my grade was not as good as my first one, I found that I had improved on many issues that I had trouble with in my identity paper.

First, my grammar seemed to improve slightly. Even though I still had many points off, it was less than the first essay. Transitions were inserted correctly this time and my tenses were agreeing. What I noticed, however was that the points that were deducted off for grammar, were different problems than last time. This confused me because I did not understand why I had done them right the first time and messed up the second time. After reviewing my essay, I realized that each comment on the grammar section had to do with the wordiness of my paper and the vague pronouns, which had been fixed in my previous essay before it was handed in for the final. I realized that while fixing my first essay I did not look up my mistakes. Instead, I just corrected what Steph had written without knowing what I was fixing and why I was doing these corrections. The work that we did in class helped me to understand the mistakes that I had made. Looking up all of the grammar problems in the book led me to see why I should not use certain punctuation marks and tenses. It solved my problems and on the third paper, I was prepared to search through and find all of my mistakes before I handed in the paper.

An issue that did not seem to be resolved in the second paper was the organization. Even though I planned this essay out more than the last, I still could not find a way to get this essay to flow correctly. Reading it now, I could think of a few ways to fix it, but it would require a large rewrite to get to this point. I am up for the challenge. To fix this I could have written out a thorough outline, but instead I quickly jotted down ideas on scrap paper. Writing out a good outline really would have made a difference. I would have seen where my essay was going and what examples I could use to prove my point. I did work an outline out for my third essay, which I found much easier to write. I found that writing about a topic that I am interested in is that most creative and most fun way to write. Writing about somebody else’s essay is tough because the author already made a point. Writing about something that I feel passionate about allows me to explore the topic and lets me prove my own point. I like that way much better.

There was one problem that came up in my second essay that I really did not have a problem with in my first essay. This is the issue of finding my thesis sentence. I could not get my point across. I tried to find a way to make it clear, but I kept getting hidden by wordy phrases and lack of organization. All of my flaws in this paper held me back from proving my point. I realized that everything that is written in a paper, affects something else. I need to dig up my thesis and try to make it clearer.

My strategy for addressing these concerns is as follows. I will think about the topic or assignment for a long period of time. I will think about what I could write about that will be interesting to me and the audience and that I can talk about for a long time without the essay becoming repetitive. The topic is very important because I have found that if I am not interested in the topic, my writing begins to dwindle. I can see that in the second paper this is what happened. I began to lose focus on what I was writing and I found my essay to be incredibly rushed at points.

Another issue that I need to address is outlining. I need to make a rough draft of the rough draft. Opening up my journal and writing down key points in my essay and examples to prove it is a task that I need to complete before going onto my computer and starting my essay. I need to come up with a solid thesis that I can elaborate on. By doing this, I will see an improvement in the way that my essay flows. It will begin to come together a lot better because I took the extra thirty minutes to think about what I need to complete.

One last concern that I will address is how to improve my grammar before I hand in the essay. I like the idea of using the Penguin Handbook to research how I should use a comma, or how to get to the point without being wordy. Instead of realizing all of my errors after the paper has been graded, I will look through my past essays and see what I have done wrong and search my new essay to make sure that I have not made the same mistakes again. This way I will understand what I have done wrong and at the same time, get a better grade on the grammar part.

After writing my second and third paper, I have a better understanding of what I need to do to improve. Even though I have not gotten my third paper back, I think that my grammar has improved a lot because I focused more on correcting it than I did on the first two. I am excited about the knowledge that I am gaining in this class and would like to keep improving.