Hurtado !

Richard Hurtado

Professor Ditch

English 115

6 December 2017

Reflection Essay

Remembering the first few weeks of the school year, I vividly remember Professor Ditch

saying two things that stuck out to me the most. The first one is when she said that shes gonna

make us work hard so that we, as developing students, are set up to par with the greater standards

for the years to come. The next item that stuck out to me was when she introduced to us her

belief in the practice of Kaizen, which is a Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement.

Both of these items have helped me become a better writer. Throughout the course we were

given writing assignments, these writing assignments were Project Space and Project Text.

Project Space was my first personal test to see where I am as a writer. Then came Project Text,

which I have set as a second test to see if Ive grown. With the corrections and feedback from

Professor Ditch, I have seen where I faltered and seen in which areas that I need to enhance

further. This feedback has guided me to the path in which I need to take in order to become a

greater writer. I believe that I have fulfilled my goal to hone my writing skills and have become a

better rhetorician.

With just the comparison of the two projects alone, it can be seen that I have grown to be

a stronger and better writer. In Project Space I was given an 83% while in Project Text, I was

then given an 87%. Despite the fact that to the public eye this may be seen as a small increase, to

me it is seen as a great change in improvement. In Project Space, I am able to see all the
 Hurtado !2

annotations left behind by Professor Ditch, I notice that quite a few read, And? Why does it

matter? At first I was lost as to trying to figure out how to possibly fix that error, but with a lot o

thinking and rereading, I finally understood how to fix that issue. It was such a small issue that I

kept repeating, and I figured out that I needed to add the reasons why it should impact the reader.

To show the reader that the argument I was making isnt only for a selected few but an issue that

has the potential to affect even the reader. Another issue I had in Project Space was that I failed

to include a transition in one of the paragraphs and on my concluding paragraph I had stated a

new example, which wouldve been more effective earlier I the essay. In Project Text I have

demonstrated my growth by avoiding these simple mistakes. I made sure that all paragraphs had

transitions, all examples were included earlier rather than at the end, and have answered all the

Why does it matter questions. Through the feedback I was able to augment the areas in which I

suffered, in the final revisions I have fixed the errors I kept committing throughout Project Space

which has ultimately made me a better writer.

Although I have grown from Project Space to Project Text, Project Text wasnt a perfect

paper either. Project Text had far simpler mistakes which included word choice. Like in the

introduction paragraph I would use words like, some and your in front of other words and

this caused the sentence to sound awkward. I also missed an s on the word performance

making it singular when I intended to make it plural. It is quite evident that in order to combat

these simple mistakes was to just have a second pair of eyes read over my essay to catch simple

mistakes other than just myself. Another problem that I had in Project Text was the occurrence of

a problematic sentence which read, While both of these characters have had an emotional

weakness that forced them to conform with their genders. To fix this, I changed this sentence so
 Hurtado !3

that it reads, While both of these characters have had several encounters in which made them

soft and emotional, which would classify them as conforming to their genders. This fixes the

problematic error in the sentence because it makes it much for fluid to read and it doesnt sound

confusing. Throughout this essay I see far less annotations and more recognition from Professor

Ditch which has also given me the signs that I have grown to be a better writer than when I

started.

As my final statement, I believe that I had grown significantly over the course of this

semester. With the examples I have mentioned form both Project Space and Project Text and the

revisions that I have made to them, it is evident to me that I have grown as a writer. However,

because of the professors strong beliefs in Kaizen, which means continuous improvement, I

know I have become a better writer but I know it wont stop here. Ill just have to keep aiming as

high as the sky in order to keep improving.