Adam Tarsia

Prof. Nicoludis

Reflection Essay

12/14/20

As I reflect on my first semester of college, I am somewhat disappointed in my initial experience as a student, however I cannot help but be thankful for the good health my family and myself have had. Some classes dragged on and were difficult to engage with, but in some, I was able to take away some genuine knowledge. I feel that due to this class’s content especially, my writing organization skills have grown significantly. The practice I have had throughout the drafting process of my four essays this semester has helped me develop in nearly all aspects as a writer, however, I have noticed the most improvement in my ability to thoroughly plan, organize and write a paper efficiently.

    The first essay of my career at CCNY, the Personal Narrative paper, was an introduction to many of the methods we used over the course of the semester in this class. Preceded by some various activity or reading-based assignments, the Personal Narrative was the first piece of writing that became a true focal point of the semester. On my first draft of the essay, I lost sight of a concise delivery, providing overwhelming description of the setting in lieu of support for my claim, and became unsure of the goal I set out to accomplish with the paper. However, the questions and constructive criticism of my classmates in the breakout room sessions helped facilitate my ability to thoroughly negotiate a goal for the piece, which was to explain the impact of Sunken Meadow State Park on my life. Through their help I was able to formulate a clear thesis and better tie back in my description-based storytelling to the main theme of the paper. Moving forward in the semester as a writer, I made it a priority to formulate a clear thesis for my papers and identify concrete evidence to explain my point, which I heavily emphasized in my Op-Ed paper as well.

    Writing the Op-Ed was a fun experience, as the more I researched and organized my evidence, the more I opened my own eyes to the real-world consequences and scale of the argument I was constructing about influencers’ true importance in America’s political landscape. I enhanced my strategies for planning through the proposal, right away making sure to map out an articulate stance on the topic and supporting it by roughly providing some of the scenarios I would later describe as evidence in my essay in a sort of “roadmap”. I practiced searching the internet to find the numbers that would incongruously prove those rough scenarios as evidence of my thesis through location of the right articles, statistics and videos, strengthening my ability to integrate multiple sources and present them to the reader in a creative manner. I enjoyed drawing on the statistics I made to create a streamlined, logical argument for my point, and once again, with the help of my classmates in the group sessions, I was able to pare down the overly verbose introduction I had in my first draft. From this paper, I learned that I feel my writing style suits an argumentative essay best, and tried to model my following two proposals and essays after an argumentative essay.

My Critical Analysis proposal for Blonde by Frank Ocean took hours to compose, and with that practice, I was able to significantly progress in my source use strategies for organizing evidence into a coherent paper. First, I listened to and engaged in analysis of the album for like the 20th time, jotting down formulated opinions throughout which eventually turned into my thesis. Next, I used a combination of evidence from the album as well as outside sources that supported the thesis and wrote down which themes to tie the evidence into, accomplishing my goal and creating a clear vision of Blonde to provide for the reader to experience. In comparison to my other essays, I did not have to shed as much material from the paper after expanding on my “roadmap”, as I consciously avoided rambling and kept my point as concise as possible. The only edits suggested by classmates and Professor N. to my draft were cleaning up my MLA formatting, speaking to my progress as a writer this semester as well as my improvement in planning/organizing a concise essay. Through the analysis, I was also able to gain a deeper appreciation for something I thought I already appreciated a lot, which is pretty special.

    For this essay, I have drawn from all the strategies I have used previously on the other papers. I negotiated clear goals in the roadmap document my classmates helped me develop and made sure to tie the points back to my development through accomplishment of the class goals without excessive word use, especially in formulation of an articulate plan for my paper. I feel that the small group meetings definitely helped me improve the most as an essay writer, maybe because they were an inkling of that class interaction I have missed so much and I was always very enthusiastic to talk to others. During review of classmates’ papers, I was definitely overwhelmingly constructive and tried to acknowledge their range of linguistic differences in order to make better suggestions for their papers, but it was tough understanding everyone’s real abilities without getting to really know them. Here’s to hoping for a little bit more ability to interact with everyone come February.

I know that this class has significantly improved my abilities as a writer this semester, and going forward, I’ll definitely use what I learned here in any class that requires creative writing. I enjoyed the writing, but I also enjoyed the synchronous section meetings. The content was always engaging and the class was definitely a little bit of relief from some of my more technical and boring lectures. Thank you Professor N. for making the rough semester Fall 2020 has been a little bit more enjoyable!