Brandon Bitner
Period 3B
April 17, 2012
Self-Reflection Paper
During my English 1010 experience there has been many essays and assignments that have benefited my writing ability. The three most beneficial essays were the movie review, the favorite place essay, and our response papers. These essays posed many different challenges, they required me to use specific writing strategies, they required me to use my critiquing eye, which allowed me to learn and progress as a writer.
One of the main writing strategies I was able to use was a personal 3rd person present tense style. In my essay titled “The Ranch” which was from the favorite place assignment, I had to stretch my writing skills to make sure that I held a consistent verb tense all the way through the paper. I have never had to write an essay in this personal form which is why it was such a great learning experience for me. I also had to use an opinionated critiquing style in the Movie Review that we had to do which required me to write in a little bit more casual form which was intended to make it conversational. This conversational style really stretched my writing skills because it didn’t come as natural as I thought it would. It was a difficult task but it proved beneficial. Although the other essays were good, the response essay was the most fun to write. In this essay I used a traditional factual strategy to persuade my audience. My strength in the essay was definitely agreeing and expounding on what William Bennett had to say, and I was able to use personal experiences such as writing about my uncle who tragically overdosed on drugs. My weakness in writing that essay was that I was grasping at straws to find something to disagree about because Legalization of Drugs didn’t seem very sensible to agree with. What I learned about myself as a writer is that I need to become more open and less bias to my own opinions if I want to be successful as a writer.
As I stated in the previous paragraph I didn’t have too much tension with the author because I agreed with most everything that he said. The only thing that I disagreed with which I stated in my essay was that Bennett ignored the fact that drugs can be used for medicinal purposes. Bennett’s factual and logical style made it extremely difficult for me to want to side with the legalization activists therefore my tension with the author was very low. Although I already had previous knowledge and opinions on this subject, by writing this paper I became less innocent on the subject. One fact that astonished me was that more than half of all drug related child abuse crimes were a direct result of drug use. I have also become very much more aware of drug problems around me and how serious they are. I was disk golfing at our local CreeksidePark when I noticed that a dad had his six year old boy smoking pot with him and his friends in the bushes. This saddened me to see because activists are promoting this terrible behavior, and no child should have to grow up that way.
The audience that I imagined in this essay was not only my fellow classmates, but the vast majority of people who are affected by drugs. This influenced my writing style to repeat and use facts that William Bennett used in his essay, to better educate and make people as aware of the subject as I am. The voice that I demonstrated in my response essay was a bold anti-drug argumentative style. By using this voice style I hope that readers will be able to feel more of the same way I do, and to be able to their logic to better judge their decisions. Writing about this subject taught me that there are so many people in this world who I think are confused and corrupted about many political subjects especially the legalization of harmful drugs. I shamefully admit that I didn’t take very many risks in this paper, but I didn’t feel like I needed to. The points that the activists used were not strong arguments, which mostly looked like it was just a desire not a necessity.
Overall, these assignments have broadened my horizons and have strengthened my skills as a writer. I know that I have a lot to improve on which is why this class has been so beneficial to me, but I am optimistic that it is these kinds of assignments that will allow me to progress.