Reflective Essay

This semester has been one of the hardest for me. It was the first time I was going full-time online, which led to me struggling with time management. My biggest issue with my writing was not setting time for it. I often felt as if my writing was rushed and felt I could do better.

 

The second part I struggled with was the prewriting stages. I would do my research and make the outline. Then, when it came down to writing, I wouldn’t like the direction of my essay and would replan the whole thing. I believe the thing my essays could have used more of was research, and direct quotes. This was something that I got feedback on from both Professor Hammet and the people who reviewed my essays in the Writing Lab. It sometimes became very frustrating, but this class has helped me improve my research skills. Regarding my writing skills, a few things I found challenging were transitions and sentence structure. In both projects, I would focus on just finishing a paragraph and then moving on to the next without much thought.

 

Out of all our projects, the argument essay was the easiest of the two for me. With an argumentative essay, one simply needs to pick a side and argue why they are right with facts. I chose to write about binge drinking among college students. While only a little research had been done on the subject, I wrote a decent essay with minimal mistakes. The Rhetorical Analysis essay was the hardest of the two. The absurdist author that I chose was Albert Camus. From this assignment, I not only improved upon my knowledge of absurdism and Camus’s philosophy, but I also improved my critical thinking skills. Having to answer the question, “What would Albert Camus think about the binge drinking epidemic among college students?” was a challenging one, to say the least. The process of answering that question challenged my research and analytical reasoning abilities.

 

This class has been as stressful as it has been helpful. It has given me the tools to prepare better for an essay and write it better. I hope to have successfully retained these lessons so that I can continue to apply them for the rest of my time at Murray and beyond.