Reflection of English 101

                Writing can be really easy at times, and really hard at others, what makes the difference is what I am writing about.  I would like to think of myself as a more creative writer, when I am on to something it flows on to the paper in no time.  However, this semester has had a lot of rhetorical analysis and research writing which has been a huge struggle.  My writing over this past semester has grown an immense amount, even when the grades have not been the best I still have learned how to be a better writer and why it can benefit me in any job field I choose.

            The very first rhetorical analysis I wrote on my own was on an article written about poverty in the United States and whether it was making people literally sick.  The rhetorical analysis is supposed to be on one specific thing the author or writer did well, such as egos, logos, pathos, their tone, diction, or voice.  Instead of one I wrote it on three, and because the writing could not be that long it was too spread out and too short of an explanation, making the analysis too hard to understand.

            From that point on I spent each rhetorical analysis, whether it be in class or on my own, determining one specific thing about the writing and spending about a half an hour on the thesis and quotes from the article.  Each one got better in my eyes however I was still getting a C+ here and a B- there.  I didn’t know what exactly I was doing wrong, even in some of the other writings that involved research and a strong thesis. 

            My professor then said that each thesis my class was writing was a “parallel thesis”, which is a thesis all students were taught in elementary school, to give your opinion and three reasons why.  Those three reasons would then turn into each body paragraph.  He said that a parallel thesis was to broad and a real college thesis was one that focused on one thing, and the many parts that made that one thing something to talk about.

            This “college thesis” would be the one thing in this class that made my writing that much better.   It forces the writer to think more in depth about the topic and really focus specifically on each little piece involved.  Overall as each assignment came and went in this class, my writing got better and with each little blog assignment it showed how writing will be a part of my job for the rest of my career.