This self-assessment will discuss the challenges I had faced and the overall improvement I gained as a writer after undergoing my first writing course in college. It all began with my first assignment, the literacy narrative. The literacy narrative was supposed to be an assignment on our views on the famous Norman Rockwell painting of Ruby Bridges and that political cartoon of Betsy DeVos.
The assignment for me wasn’t relatively too difficult to formulate an opinion on because I already had a strong opinion on the topic, that DeVos should never be compared to Ruby Bridges. One couldn’t go to a school because of her actions in a position of power, the other couldn’t because of the color of their skin. It was a very powerful paper for me to write because I felt that the injustices the bridges felt all those years ago still existed today and I felt that I had to do all the I could to get the point across in that we have to improve as a society. It was a paper that wasn’t too challenging for me to write and an received an A- on my first paper, all seemed well.
Then came the exploratory paper, one that was by far difficult and challenging in many aspects. Firstly, this paper required research, a new component to a paper that haven’t explored yet. The first assignment was straight forward with the two images provided to us with a question we had to answer. The Exploratory paper challenged us to select a piece of literature first, and then formulate not only an opinion on a character but use examples from the story to prove such a point. This component was very difficult in that you had to read the literature through a Freudian lens to find something worth trying to prove. In “The Black Cat”, by Edgar Allen Poe, I felt very overwhelmed. Poe’s writing has a lot of dark themes that tend to overlay each other. And those themes, were not easy to prove. Here’s an excerpt from my paper that shows my attempt to prove a point.
The first instance of this displacement was with his first cat Pluto. As was said in the text, “One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer.” Only a person who hates himself would take offense to a cat, his own insecurities and built up anger would cause him to harm the cat. And the fact that he was out in town drinking heavily to the point of intoxication goes to show his desire to bury his problems. No sane person as the narrator claims himself at the start harms a cat for avoiding him.
The goal of my paper was to prove that the narrator displaced his anger onto the cats and his wife because he felt that everyone was suffering around with his presence. He felt that his wife was suffering everyday by being married to him. And those inner demons were strong that he felt that he needed to kill. This idea that I formulated had evidence in the text that I used but was very tricky for me to express. This thesis wasn’t clear cut in stone rather it was my interpretation of the text. The whole time I was writing the paper, I kept second guessing myself and asking if this makes sense. I was scared that I’ll do very poorly on the paper because of the fear that my interpretation was completely wrong. During peer reviews, I still felt that even though my peers told me I had a strong paper, that feeling still stuck around in my head. I tried my absolute best on the paper and hoped that I made sense for whomever was reading it.
The final paper of the year was the Critical Research Paper, by far the most difficult paper I had to write in my life. The CRP required the use of scholarly articles, something I wasn’t very familiar with. We spent multiple classes in the library learning how to use the CCNY library databases and how to specify our searches. For “Super Frog Saves Tokyo”, scholarly articles were difficult to find. We had a list of prompts we could use that made the brainstorming process easier on what we were going to write, but the credible research was hard to find. After writing a paper in which we were the research, we now had to find other people’s credible research and tie it into our paper and put a spin on it that makes my point make sense. My original proposal for the CRP wasn’t even my final draft. I had originally, the below proposal:
This proposal however, did not have enough evidence to back up. It was a great thought, but difficult to execute. My CRP’s actual thesis ended up being drastically different.
“If someone feels like they’re all alone for years and years, their minds will split and disassociate to find comfort in their lives”
The CRP made me spend hours looking for credible sources to help me make my point make sense. The internet has millions and millions of resources up for you to view but filtering to find what you specifically need is not easy. But the CRP did teach how me to do this and prepared for future assignments in my college life. This year of FIQWS has made me write three different papers with three different styles that taught three more ways to write. I spent countless hours in front of a computer writing and finding research and doing all these little things to do my absolute best. These assignments have pushed me to do better and better as my college experiences go on. I take what I’ve learned from this class with gratitude, that it’ll make me an even better writer and allow me to go on and do great things.
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