Drew Hall

Mid Year Reflection

Throughout this semester, I have likely worked on more writing assignments than in any

semester before. This has led to my reading and writing skills developing significantly, which

can be seen in the progression of my writing assignments. Out of the skills that we have worked

on so far during this year, I have most clearly leveled up my thesis construction. From the first

essay that we wrote, the American Dream essay, my thesis reads, “The gambling industry is well

rooted in America, where it can influence people to make decisions that negatively impact their

lives, but is also capable of providing economic benefits that end up having a positive impact”.

While this thesis gives some details beyond the fact that there are negatives and positives to

gambling, the main argument behind it still boils down to this point. All that the thesis really

argues is that gambling has a nuanced effect on the country, and does not delve any deeper into

the topic, as a stronger, more complex thesis would. In a more recent example, the argument

essay, I was able to achieve this higher level of complexity after developing my writing skills.

Although it took multiple drafts, my final thesis reads, “While many people consider video

games to be less artistically meaningful than other types of media, treating them solely as

entertainment, video games have an incredible amount of artistic potential because of the way

that they can enhance storytelling and visual imagery with interactivity”. This thesis statement is

a significant improvement over my previous one in multiple ways. Most importantly, my main

claim is simply more complex, arguing a specific quality about video games instead of just that it

is a nuanced issue. Additionally, the thesis begins by addressing a counterclaim, reflecting the
fact that part of the assignment was to refute a counter argument, which I do later in the essay.

Lastly, the second thesis goes into more detail, specifying that the main idea of the essay is the

interactivity of video games, while the first thesis remains more broad.

Another skill that I believe I demonstrated a strength in throughout the past semester is

analyzing evidence. For example, in the Into the Wild essay, I used a body paragraph to focus on

how the author, Jon Krakauer, utilized his own story within the story of the main character, Chris

McCandless. After presenting evidence about Krakauer’s past desire to reshape his life through

adventuring, I explained, “While McCandless did have places he wanted to go, notably Alaska,

he still lacked any specific goals or false ideas of redefining his life. By differentiating

McCandless from himself, Krakauer helps the reader to understand how McCandless was

legitimately following a lifestyle, not just chasing after a pointless goal”. Earlier in the essay, I

covered the idea of Krakauer including extra elements or stories which allow the reader to make

comparisons to McCandless, bettering their understanding of him as a character. My analysis in

this paragraph looks deeper into that concept, and I am able to use it to reach a key conclusion

about McCandless’ motivations, tying directly to my main claim in the thesis. The idea of

McCandless not having real goals in his adventures, and therefore lacking some of the ignorance

that many people have accused him of, is very important for the reader to understand Krakuer’s

interpretation of McCandless, and the possibility of having sympathetic feelings towards him.

Despite this, I was able to keep the analysis fairly straightforward and understandable, which is

important in communicating a claim.

During the major writing assignments that we have done throughout the past semester, I

feel like I have demonstrated fairly strong all around skills. However, reflecting on the process

that I have taken with each of my essays and other large assignments, my revision skills could
definitely still use some improvement. For the major revision assignment that we did near the

end of the semester, I believe that I was able to significantly improve the piece of writing that I

chose, both in content and writing. The problem comes from the fact that I have not been able to

successfully utilize my revision skills that I demonstrated on that assignment within other

assignments that are not built around revision. When the process of revision is not clearly

outlined as it was in that assignment, I tend to mostly ignore it, barely changing my final draft

from the first time I wrote it down. While there are many different areas in my writing that could

serve as examples of this, it is most easily demonstrated by simple phrasing issues. For example,

in my Into the Wild essay, I wrote, “Waterman is demonstrated by Krakauer to have basically

given up on life”. Simply doing a careful reading back through my essay would have allowed me

to catch the awkward sentence, but since I pretty much ignored the revision process, this did not

happen. It is a perfectly functional sentence that would never result in my essay being

significantly weakened, but it provides an example of a larger issue, which impacts my essays in

a subtler, yet more consequential way. It is difficult to tell exactly how the lack of revision

impacts my writing, but it is practically guaranteed that the final products would be generally

stronger in multiple different ways if I allowed time to revise.

My primary goal for my writing during semester two revolves around the problem with

revision in my essays. I think the reason that I have consistently ignored the major step of

revising is that I do not have enough structure when it comes to my writing process. My various

essays have all been completed on an inconsistent time frame with major differences between my

process for each one. In an effort to fix this in some capacity, I want to try making a schedule for

how I plan to write an essay before I really get into writing it. If this strategy ends up working for

me, it would allow my writing to be significantly more focused and consistent. This idea also
connects to my ongoing goal of planning out the structure of my essays beforehand, which I

started trying to do earlier in the semester. The essay structure planning has been working out

well for me, and it is an important step in the larger planning process that I want to attempt. Both

of these planning strategies link back to one of the biggest problems that I have been trying to

face as a student, which is time management and procrastination. I have done reflections in the

past where I simply list that I will improve my time management, but this never ends up with any

real results. I believe that having a specific, achievable goal in making a writing process

guide/schedule, I may actually be able to make a difference in my time management. With the

issue of time management mitigated and an actual revision stage in my writing process, my

writing could legitimately improve.