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Charles Edwards

Instructor McCann

English 1301.127

29 November 2021

English 1301 Reflective Essay

English 1301 is a fun yet stressful class. There was a lot of work to do, but I could see my

self gradually improve from essay to essay. With the assignments given they were useful, when

it came to trying to understand what exactly the essay we are supposed to do. The questions

given for this review are answered to the best of my ability for the most part, it added a bit of

stress, but overall, it helped add to the word count of my essay. English 1301 is not as bad as

other people say it is, even with some of the stress and the large amounts of assignments, it

wasn’t that bad. In the end I feel pretty confident in my skills which I hope that made my essays

at least 25 percent better.

To start off with, the rhetorical choices made during the revising of the past three essays

were fairly simple. For essay one the rhetorical choices vary based on what exactly at the

moment, was trying to be stated to the audience. The rhetorical choices which were made while

creating the website were similar to the ones made for the essays. While creating the portfolio

several of the past assignments were quite helpful, and contributed to the portfolio. Most of the

assignments given before the essays have all been useful and provided information on what

exactly is to be done when doing the essay. If any reader would like to see the assignments

which I am discussing feel free to check out the weebly portfolio I made and it all should be

there. While taking the class English 1301, one lesson which can help and transfer over to other
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classes is the use of pathos, logos, and ethos. These topics can all be used in almost any class

where it will be mandatory to write a paper, or speak in front of an audience. Once example of

using these topics in a different class, would be using it in the History 1301 class. During this

class students’ grades would be heavily affected on a position paper, as well as a debate. While

doing these assignments, student all used pathos, logos, and ethos to sway readers, and listeners

to one side of an argument. Learning about the proper way to use them in English 1301, gave

students the do’s and don’ts of using them. Students knowing how to properly use pathos, logos,

and ethos had stronger arguments, and moved more people to a certain side of an argument,

rather then students who didn’t. There was only a couple of the things taught in English 1301

which is in a sense only used in this certain class, and classes like it. One thing was how she

wanted us to write, even though MLA is a commonly used format, it really only is used when it

comes to writing essays in English 1301 classes. The most challenging part of creating the

website was organizing everything. The tools which are used are quite simple, yet still took a

while to get a hang of. Figuring out what is needed and where it should go was another issue. It

was a long and grueling processes, which may have been the reason for several sleepless nights.

Maybe it was just the inner critic that kept wanting to change everything, and it would end up

wanting to fix that same thing over and over, because it never seemed right. Another challenge

was just finding everything which was going to be implemented into my portfolio. Going

through all the weeks on blackboard just to find a single assignment, just to have the ability to

see the teachers’ comments was the definition of struggle. Adding that to having a slow

computer, makes everything even worse. Now on the other hand, some parts of creating the

website were actually fairly simple and quick to do. One of which being adding text, and all the

files of the assignments. Thankfully inputting the assignments and essay was not as hard as
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actually just finding the essays. Well as a writer the skills which I have obtained over this past

semester have improved. One main skill is the use of punctuation, at the begging the reader can

tell that I struggled. When someone reads my more recent essays, you cant tell that I somewhat

know how to punctuation better.

To continue, doing all the three essays have all drained me mental and physical. The first

essay I would say took the least amount of energy, but it still was draining. At the time I

struggled with time management, which I still do to this day. I also had some things going on

which in the end would use up majority of my time, which in the end took away time from the

essay. Having a lot going on plus several assignments which weren’t hard but took a good

amount of time. It was not the best time but I tried my best to get everything done with. It was an

extremely stressful time and I always felt that weight of “did I turn everything in.” It was a fun

experience with all the essay though I enjoyed the time I had doing the essay I fell as if I was not

really able to fully do all the writing processes properly. It was kind of an essay which I

“winged” in a sense. Even with the fact that I ended up winging it, I did try my best in the tie that

I was doing the essay. When it came to peer review it did indeed help a lot with editing and

perfecting my essay. Once I started to revise and edit this essay, I felt pretty good. Knowing that

it was one of the first essays I’ve done I knew that it would be able to correct a lot with ease. The

end result of this essay I do believe I made it twenty-five percent better, maybe even more. I

found and fixed incomplete sentences, run ones, comma splices, and mainly more things.

Furthermore, the second essay we did I do believe it was the best essay, or paper I have

written in this semester. It has loads of facts, and used the social media platform Instagram.

During that time, I had loads of family issues going on, but in the end, I still manage to make a

pretty good essay. Based on looking back I fell that this essay was the second most stressful, but
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even that it still is the best essay I have done. I believe my citations were on point, in the essay,

both the work cited and the in-text citations. While doing this essay I felt stumped and had a

sense of writer’s block for the most part. Once I started to put my ideas tougher, I wasn’t able to

stop typing, and kept typing till I was done. It was semi difficult to find the similarities and

differences and that’s what mainly took most of my time. The citations were difficult to do but

once I got the hang of it, I was able to speed through it and complete all the citations. Overall,

the essay was stressful and time consuming, but in the end, I was able to push through the

adversity and have a pretty good essay in the end. I felt as if that was my “peak” when it came to

writing essays, when I start talking about essay 3 you will notice how all the moment just came

crashing down. When is came to finally correcting the finale draft and adding it to my portfolio, I

feel as if it was the easiest one to do. In the sense of this one not being as bad as the other ones, it

was a bit harder to find mistakes, but I was able to revise it. I feel pretty confident in my attempt

to make this essay twenty-five percent better. I think it was due to the confidence I had while

doing the essay the first time, which in a way translated back to me editing and revising for the

portfolio.

Adding on to the previous statement, essay 3 in my opinion it’s the worst essay that I

have ever done. I felt as if I was not fully their, and I just had constant stress, due to my debate

being in the same week as the final draft for this essay. The citations on this essay were terrible.

In-text as well as the one in the work cited. Even while writing this essay, I felt like I was in a

constant writer’s block. It was the most mentally draining essay I have ever done. I never felt s if

I was getting my point across but the deadline was always creeping up so I just turned in what I

could. The first two drafts are basically the same, due to me just not being able to decide what

article I wanted to write about. It was a real struggle but I managed to find a article to write
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about. Doing this essay was just a pain in the butt. I didn’t enjoy this essay one single bit; it was

the most stressful and grueling essay I have ever done. The aspect of managing my time went out

the window I just did what I could during the tie that I had. Essay three gave me so much stress,

but in the end when everything was turned in and I woke up the next day I felt as if a burden had

been lifted off of my shoulders. When it came to me turning in my final draft, I got so frustrated

because the similarity repots came out to twenty-seven percent. This kept me up at night and I

was trying to figure out how I would be able to lower it. By the time I figured out how to lower

the similarity, it was already passed the closing time of the drop box. The amount of pain,

frustration, and to the point of depression that essay three gave me is greater then anything I’ve

expired in my life. The essay had me emotionally conflicted during the time of the essay, ad no

that I had to correct and revises the issues which were wrong. I was so unmotivated to correct it,

due to the lack of confidence I had while doing the original essay. In the end I was able semi

revises it, and I am debating if it actually is at least twenty-five percent better. I mainly tried to

fix the citations, and subject verb agreement issues through my essay.

In conclusion, the portfolio and English 1301 as a whole have been quite the experience,

from the highs to the all time lows, in the end I believe it made me a even better writer then I

was. Answering the questions which are given to us to do, explains majority of the process I

went through, and as well as the thoughts behind it. Then my thoughts through essay one how I

went through my writing process. It also goes over the emotions I fell while writing the essay.

Then I talk about essay two which explains same thing as one, but I felt more confident, and that

essay is probably the best one I have written. The outcome of essay two was probably the best

and at an all time high but then going into essay three I went into an all time low. I discussed all

the emotions and frustrations I felt going trough writers block constantly, and the frustrations
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from just finals in generally. I am extremely happy to say this is the last thing that I need to do,

and the amount o relif I fell leaving this reflection is like no other. In the end thank you for being

a great teacher, and being extremely patient with us, you are truly a one of a kind teacher.