Irvin Perez

Professor Beadle

English 115

7 December 2017

Reflection essay

Growth is necessary not only in life but in school. I was once told a saying that

movement is life, stagnation is death this is a quote that I personally connects and resonates

well with the current state of my writing. When I first started in this course I took it lightly and

did not take it as serious as I should, this can be seen in my writing in my initial essay. Seeing

my grade made me realize that I was not in high school anymore and I needed to take this course

serious and fortunately I can say that I as a writer have improved greatly. My writing I have

personally has grown and has become noticeably better than my first official essay. And when I

was told that I would have to save my final essays, correct, and better them I was initially vexed

because the essays met my standards and I whole heartedly believed that I did them to the best of

my writing capabilities. But, after thorough revision of my essays I realized that there was still

much that I had to work on.

With my first essay I was somewhat confused with what exactly I was writing about

because I had never written an essay similar to my project space essay. I understood the

instructions and knew what was being requested of me to do but what I didnt know was how to

apply my knowledge and write the essay. After I turned it in I was confident that I had gotten at

least a B, but I was wrong and got a C. Now I realize why, for starters, my organization was not

very strong. The matter in which I fixed this was first read my essay top to bottom and pay close

attention to how exactly I organized my essays. First thing I did was move switch my second and
third paragraph; meaning. My second paragraph became my third paragraph and my third

paragraph became my second. Read again soon after and already started noticing a difference in

the essay in totality. Furthermore, I also worked on more minor errors such as punctuation and

spelling errors that I had overseen in the original final draft. In addition to myself, I also did

something I had not done prior which was seek the help of my peers rather than just visiting the

LRC. Having someone new read it and receive a perspective from someone who was more like

myself rather than a teacher was very insightful. My peers enlightened me and showed me the

error in my ways. They helped me realize that there was a lot of words that were not necessary

and did not need to be in the final draft of the essay. So I went back in and eliminated words that

were not necessary. On top of this, I not only eliminated words, but in some instances I replaced

them with words that were better suited for the situation. Fortunately, after this essay I did show

some growth in my second essay but there were still things that I had to change.

In the second essay I had a somewhat easier time mostly due to the fact that the prompt

was a little more simpler to understand and straight to the point. I had to compare and contrast

the original Godzilla film to the more recent Shin Godzilla. I personally had more fun working

on this assignment than I did on the previous because it was on a topic that I personally enjoyed.

When I received my essay grade I was glad that I was showing some form of progression. But

similarly to the first essay I did not know how I could do better in an essay that I personally

believed was written to the best of my capabilities. I did not have as many issues as I did with the

previous essay; although, the ones that I did have were repeated issues such as organization,

punctuation, and work on making sure that the essay was coherent and would make sense to a

reader. I had the same process I went through and adjusted some paragraphs, for example I

moved my fifth paragraph and switched it with my second paragraph and my second paragraph
became my third paragraph. One thing that I did was read my thesis and make sure my writing

followed it because I now know that in order for an essay to flow together well I have to use the

thesis as a foundation and use it to guide me in what I write and how I present the work that I

have written. Another thing that I struggled with in this essay was my work cited. I had to make

sure I was using proper and credible secondary citations. In addition, to this I had to add my

primary citations, which was supposed to be evidence that I had gotten from the film. I went in

added the primary information that I had left out initially.

In conclusion, this was a great learning and humbling experience. I must admit I went

into the course underestimating the work because of how I did in high school. But I know now

that that was not the case. While I did learn much in just this one semester such as proper MLA

format, or making sure I have a proper work cited page with credible primary and secondary

evidence. My professor Mr. Beadle greatly helped improve and also played a role in the

improvement of my writing. He was always there for any questions I had and answered them

honestly and swiftly. There is still much for me to learn I know this now but, my professor has

provided me with a solid foundation and I know if I continue practicing I will hopefully one day

became a great writer. I will continue to apply what I have learned in this class and apply it to

my other courses whenever they require me to write a paper, an essay, or any assignment that

requires me to do a large amount of writing.