Be the change you wish to see in writing

Throughout my years in school, I have had to write many essays and papers. Some were easy to write and some were not. The papers most difficult for me to write were the ones where I had to lift evidence and analyze it. It was hard for me because sometimes when “analyzing” evidence I would just recap what the evidence said. I have improved my writing in many ways such as in my punctuation, analyzing, and peer-reviewing.

Even though I’m working on my punctuation, it is still not my best. Sometimes I put too many commas and don’t know where they go. For example in my first paper the Immigration Narrative I wrote “She works in a salon. Sometimes she goes to work at 7 am and comes back home at 11 pm and the next day wakes up at 8 am to go back to work.” I feel that after salon instead of a period a comma should go there, but I’m not completely sure. In my Reply Paper, I write, “Moms have a special intuition, they know how we feel and when things are wrong.” In this sentence, I am not sure what goes between “intuition” and “they” if a comma, a colon, or a semicolon. 

As I’ve said, analyzing has always been a struggle for me in writing, I tend to rephrase what the evidence is saying. On the other hand, this semester I have learned how to analyze my evidence. You can see the difference between my analysis in my Reply Paper, and my Final 

Paper. In my Reply Paper, I said, “Our tenement was nothing but a junk-heap rotten lumber and brick” (Dwork 8). In addition, on top of the tenements falling down because the walls were rotten, the rent was high.” here you can see that I recapped the quote. It was hard for me to go into deep and explain with sensory details what the quote meant. Therefore, in my Final Paper, you can see the progress that I have made since the Reply Paper. In my Final Paper, I state, “In the poem “Worms” A. Leyeles writes:

They don’t devour me, 

They entangle me,  (Leyeles 9-10) 

The poet uses imagery to display how the fear of advocating and rising “entangle” him, however, it does not “devour” him, which means that there is still a chance to detangle and speak up.” With this analysis, I got so into deep about what the quote meant to me, that I even extracted words from the lines I lifted to demonstrate that I knew what the lines were conveying. The lines didn’t say anything about the fear of advocation however, with the context of the poem I expressed what the poet was trying to portray. 

In college, I have learned how to peer review. Peer reviewing was very hard for me because I didn’t focus much or didn’t know the purpose of it if the teacher was going to end up reviewing it. Now I have learned that peer review is important because this is a way for me to view the different perspectives of my work and also allows me to get new ideas and make my paper better. In my first peer review of this semester, I had the question “What is the strongest aspect of this piece? Which parts work well?” I said, “The strongest aspect of this piece is the story that Daniel’s mom is telling about her experience in Cambodia. So the details.” instead of going more into depth and saying something like: the strongest aspect of this piece was his use of sensory details and the way he knew how to connect it to this mean point. In my latest peer review you can see that the question I got was: “Evaluate your peer’s thesis.  Is it a strong thesis? Why or why not?” and my answer was “My peer’s thesis has a very good idea but it is too broad. She should make it more specific.” This conveys how unlike my first peer review I answered the question correctly and when straight to the point. In that same peer review, I got the question, “Evaluate the evidence presented in the paper to support the thesis.  Is the evidence sufficient? Have quotations been adequately explained?” For this question, I stated, “The evidence is sufficient and I loved how she quoted and analyzed each point.” In this case, I showed my peer what I liked and felt would make their paper great. 

In conclusion, looking back at the things that have changed is good. In life, in academics, and in general. We learn a lot about ourselves. My writing changes every day because every day I am learning something new about writing. Sometimes things will change and some things I will just have to work on. Some of my struggles in writing are/were peer-reviewing, punctuation, and analyzing; however, working and practicing them will help me improve and become a better writer. Finally, it is very important to see where you are needing help and find that help either with your professors or online, there are many options for help.