Reflective Essay
Asher Streater
Comp II
Professor Hammett
4 May 2025
Reflective Essay
This semester's class has advanced my mastery of writing substantially. Looking back on my writing for the course, I love that this class challenged my ability to view the same thing with a different perspective. Not only did I learn a lot whilst forming my view on the obesity epidemic, I also learned to view it as something greater than just a physical issue. By following the PEE format, I was able to sharpen my ability to change perspective on the topic of the epidemic of obesity and truly acknowledge my audience properly and professionally. This class also helped me abolish my bad habit of simply presenting a source instead of analyzing it and clarifying how it fits my take or argument. This leads to a more personal writing style that is mine, instead of just regurgitating information.
This class also sharpened my ability to plan essays instead of seemingly stumbling through them. Through the process of writing assignments such as the ones I was required to write for this class, a plan was required thus a rough outline was born. This helped me guide the essay instead of, by the end of it all, having to rearrange the order of topics or information presented. Likewise, my revision and editing skills have improved. At the start of this course, I always tried to write the final draft in the first draft. This class taught me that writing essays that way is simply inefficient and ineffective. Comp II also taught me that revision of previous writing doesn’t mean the writing was bad, but that the message wasn’t fully delivered to its intent. In the process of revising my essays, I also sharpened my comma usage as well as overall grammar. I discovered, much to my dismay, that I do not know MLA as well as I thought I did. Hopefully, much like how I grew throughout this course I can continue to grow in my expertise in formatting throughout my college education. This shifted perspective on essay organization has allowed me to have a healthier relationship with writing, even though I am a perfectionist and finally come to peace with the idea that revision is a necessary part of the writing process.
My “hatred” for writing emerged in middle school when I had an English teacher whom I always felt made me write robotically instead of intuitively. At the same time I had this history teacher who assigned a fairly broad worldview essay. The only thing required of this piece is that it answers the question; Through what lens do you view the world? We answered this question twice throughout that school year, once at the beginning and once at the end. The purpose of this assignment was to show the evolution of thought and how much we had grown throughout the semesters. My favorite thing about this assignment was the disparity in length as I knew classmates that brought in deeper thought and submitted 10+ page essays and kids who submitted 5 sentences “essays.” This class, much like my history class in middle school, reminded me that there is a balance between esteemed professionalism and personalized fluidity that makes an essay flow smoothly as thought itself forms.
In my first writing assignment, I felt that I followed a stiff informational approach much like that of my essays done for my middle school English teacher. While in my second essay, I loosened up and took a step back letting me to view the epidemic of obesity for all that it truly was. This allowed me to not only grow and learn, but also share the perspective of an absurdist author. This class has positively impacted my view of writing and increased my applicable knowledge in the realm of personalization, punctuation, planning, formatting, and delivering a high-level college essay. While there have been ups and downs in both my pieces over the epidemic of obesity, I find that with them both in mind, I have grown as a writer and a student.
