Abstract: This was the last essay I wrote for this class. In this self-reflection essay, the purpose of this self-reflection essay is to let us reflect on the essays we have written and explain how this course has helped us improve our writing skills and meet the course learning objectives throughout this whole semester.

Self-Assessment

Mei Yu Huang

Professor Carpenter

FIQWS10108

16 December 2024

After taking this course I felt that my writing skills have improved significantly compared to last summer. This course helped me strengthen my ability to cite in MLA format, and interpret, and summarize poems and quotes in a more coherent and organized approach. Throughout the semester, the essay assignments have also helped me construct a stronger thesis statement and sharpen my organization skills as well as my ability to revise and edit my work, which let me deliver clearer and more precise writing. And I also learned how to look for sources in the library’s database. In this self-assessment, I will reflect on how this course has helped me grow as a writer and the skills I have acquired and improved on.

A course learning objective that I feel that I have achieved is the “locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias. When writing my position essay, I had to use the CCNY database such as One Search to find academic articles to support my claim on how the opening of the FreshDirect warehouse contributed to the increase in air pollution in the South Bronx. For example, I used the article, “Opening a Large Delivery Service Warehouse in the South Bronx: Impacts on Traffic, Air Pollution, and Noise” to help me back up my claim. While writing this essay, I made sure to verify whether the article had the author’s last and first name. By doing that I was able to determine if the article was written by a bot. This essay has also allowed me to “practice systematic application of document formatting and citation conventions”. I was required to write my position paper in MLA format so, every time I quoted a passage from an article, I included the author’s last name and the page number in parentheses at the end of the quote. Additionally, had to compile a list of all the cited sources after I was done writing the essay.  For instance, on a separate page, I listed each cited source in a specific order, starting with the author’s last name and first name, followed by the title of the work, the publisher of the work, the publication date, and the article’s URL. If the source did not have an author, I would start the citation with the title of the work instead.

Another course objective that I have achieved throughout this semester is “develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing”. In this class, we had a peer review day for every essay, where we reviewed each other’s essays. I found this very helpful, as the feedback from my classmates allowed me to polish and strengthen my final draft. For example, in the PSA group project my classmates suggested that I reduce the amount of text and incorporate more pictures to convey my message more effectively instead of making the slide too worldly. I followed their suggestion by shortening the paragraph in the slide about the harms of carbon emissions into a few sentences and adding relevant pictures to complement the text. In addition, this class has also helped me improve my approach to planning my drafts. At the beginning of the semester, we read an article by Lamott, “Shitty First Drafts”, which emphasizes that drafts don’t have to be perfect. And that the best way to start a draft is to write whatever comes to your mind no matter how bad it seems and then revise and polish them later.  I applied this process of messy drafting for all my essays in this class, and it proved very effective, as it improved my work overall.

The second essay of this course allowed me to summarize and interpret poems. Before writing the Poem Reader Response I practiced summarizing the main idea of each of the six poems in class. After that, I had to choose one poem to focus on and I chose the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver then I had to interpret the poem in my own words using figurative language and word choice to back up my reasons. For instance, my first reason was that Nature is shown to serve as a healing power during challenging times and I used imagery to show how this relates to what I had said: “The rain running down the land illustrates the idea that we can imagine the soothing sight of the rain running across the land distracting us from our worries and letting our minds wander to the peaceful and serene sight of the rain going down its course freeing them from our troubled minds”. Here I interpreted how the quote links to how nature is a healing power.

In this class, we spent a significant amount of time “developing and engaging in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes”.  While this approach was helpful at times, there were instances when the feedback I received from my classmates wasn’t as helpful. For example, during a peer review, my classmate only gave feedback on the grammar and structure of the essay, which wasn’t enough information for me to make big revisions to my essay. As a result, I often had to seek additional feedback outside of class. However, most of the time, I received insightful and constructive feedback from my peers.

Overall, I have improved a lot as a writer by taking this course. Through completing the essay assignments, I was able to improve and attain new writing skills However, I’m still not a perfect writer and there are still a lot of areas that I have to improve on.