Spaulding 1

Julia Spaulding

Professor Jon Beadle

English 115

14 December 2020

My Journey through English 115

Before entering college, I wouldn’t say I liked writing essays. Finding concrete details

from books and online texts and connecting ideas in a way that flows on paper was not my

forte. While my friends loved writing essays and always finished their reports surprisingly fast, I

was still staring at a blank page for hours before I could figure out the words I wanted to say. I

always abhorred how it felt as if everyone else was a fantastic writer besides me, but I realized I

am not as bad of a writer as I believed I was in college. English 115 is the first English class I

have ever taken in college, and although it was through remote learning, I have still learned a

lot. By enrolling in the English 115 course, I am a lot more confident in writing strong thesis

statements, organizing essays, analyzing texts for evidence, and writing conclusion paragraphs.

The first essay I wrote in this class was Project Space, an essay about analyzing past

student papers for the rhetorical devices ethos, logos, and pathos. Specifically, in this essay, I

examined “Safe Space or Wasted Space?” by Ranzen Pangilinan. Because I have written many

rhetorical analysis essays in high school, this one felt a lot more natural. Finding and analyzing

the texts for rhetorical strategies was not difficult because of my many past experiences, but

writing a powerful thesis has always been a struggle but because of my professor teaching my

class to think of the essential questions to answer: who, why, where, when, and how, I was able

to write a strong thesis statement. Knowing these questions made it a lot easier for me to write
 Spaulding 2

a thesis because it was a more straightforward and facile process. By answering all of those

questions, I felt optimistic about the quality of my paper’s thesis statement. Furthermore, when

I wrote the outline of this rhetoric essay, my organization needed a lot of help. The paragraphs

weren’t in a way that made the essay flow, but through my peers and professor, I understood

how to organize my essay so that the reader could understand. I now realize it is a lot easier to

read a paper about ethos, logos, and pathos when each device has its own paragraph that can

compare and contrast the different ways the author utilized them. Another skill I was not

proficient in was writing conclusion paragraphs. My conclusion paragraphs always sound like a

reworded version of my introduction paragraph, but I learned how to write a more compelling

conclusion paragraph by visiting the LRC. The LRC taught me that a conclusion paragraph

connects your thesis to a larger or bigger picture. I can now correlate my essay to society,

culture, the environment, or even politics because it will get my reader more engaged and

thinking about my thesis. By looking back at my past works, applying everything my professor

taught me, and visiting the LRC, I wrote a successful rhetorical analysis essay.

The second essay I wrote in English 115, Project Text, was not as easy as a process. I was

so used to writing analysis essays that it made writing an argument essay feel almost

impossible. In this paper, I had to choose a side and argue about which is more monstrous, the

self or society as presented in Murakami’s short stories, but I faced many setbacks while

writing. For example, my biggest obstacle for this essay was incorporating online articles to

support my argument. I found reliable sources from the Oviatt Library, but I realized the ones I

originally wanted to use did not make sense with my paper because of my professor’s feedback.

It was already a struggle to find credible sources, but I had to look for more again to prove how
 Spaulding 3

society is more monstrous. Luckily, I had enough practice finding evidence in the primary

sources from the rhetorical essay, so I didn’t have to stress those but finding secondary sources

was frustrating. It was a challenge for me to connect the secondary sources with the primary

ones, but I could do it by looking back at my past essay and finding a way to connect the online

articles to the thesis. Moreover, creating a thesis and writing a conclusion paragraph was a lot

more manageable than before because I used the acquired strategies I have learned and had

my rhetorical essay as a reference. I did not perform as well on this argument essay as I did with

the rhetorical analysis, but I still executed it well. I learned how to properly search and utilize

secondary sources and progress my thesis and conclusion paragraph skills.

Writing essays has never been easy for me, but English 115 has made writing a lot less

complicated and burdensome than I thought it was. Because of my professor and the resources

at my university, I was able to fully comprehend how to write a captivating thesis statement,

examine online sources for vital pieces of evidence, organize my essay in a way the audience

can be engrossed by, and connect my writing to a broader view in the conclusion paragraph. I

have learned a lot more useful skills here for writing thesis and conclusion paragraphs than I did

in high school. If teachers could teach students these valuable strategies on how to write a

strong thesis and conclusion sooner, writing essays will be a lot easier in college. Although

writing essays and English class still isn’t my favorite subject, I feel more assured in my abilities

to write than I did before. I feel more confident in writing than I was on the first day of school. I

am honestly impressed with how much I have learned and grown as a writer in this class, and I

will employ all the skills and strategies I have learned in this class for writing essays in the

future.