As a first year college student, I  assumed at this point of my life as an adult, with the all the years of writing in elementary, middle, and high school I would know if writing was truly a creative passion I can delve more into and continue on with  in my personal as well my academic life. But with the repetitive defeats and low marks I have received in the writing spectrum in the last year of high school, I concluded writing was not an ally I should walk down anymore. In the last year of high school, teachers had given research papers and many specific academic oriented essays to us students labeling them as what “college essays will be like”. And on the last day of school I received my research paper on Islamic Oppression In America with the borderline passing grade. That was the last straw for me, I assumed if I couldn’t right a simple 13 page essay for college what would be the point of writing. But, college is a place to learn new things and about yourself after all, and with four months of english composition  I seemed to have found the new beginning of a new writing journey.

From the beginning of the semester we have been told to write 3 major papers. Which are the Literary Narrative, Exploratory Essay and Researched Critical analysis.  After doing a draft of the paper we are put into groups in which our peers review and gives feedback to improve the paper. But, we also get professional feedback from our teacher, Ms.Cohl. These were the best thing that could have happen to us students because we get precise feedback on specific parts that need help. The first paper to go through this process was the critical analysis essay. My essay was called “The End of the Rainbow”, by far my most favorite essay to write that started my love of writing to spark again. In this essay, we were expected to share a story of a moment in our lives that impacted our writing lives. So this story delve into talking about a moment of my childhood in second grade. For the most part since this was very flexible essay, it was very clear of my story and message. I spoke my personality, through the various humorous parts. But, there were many run-on sentences and mostly my main problem was how to balance out what details were to much and how much was to little. There were points of the essay in which i mentioned key objects that affect the story but, I didn’t explain it assuming it would be to much and end up being off topic. This was a problem i dealt with most of my life, i would mostly share too much details to a point where a big part of the writing is just a whole other topic. For example, in the essay i stated “The wand of doom, also known as the red pen” and continued my story leaving the audience with no context of the red pen. Through the feedback from my teacher i was told to explain why the red pen was seen so negatively and if I ever had be affected by it. This would help the audience continue to understand why I was traumatized and avoiding the red pen from the teacher,meaning i didn’t want any negative feedback from the teacher for my writing, which looking back now would have been the best thing to ever happen to me as a writer. So through the reviewing process what I added after “ The wand of doom, also known as the red pen” was how negative this was and how people reacted from it compared to me. Through, analyzing more parts of this paper i continued to analyze and talk about certain objects in depth. Through this whole review process I was able to learn and understand to bring up and give little but of context  towards parts of the story that affect the main characters mostly without making a whole other story about it. I was advised by my peers to read it out loud repeatedly in order for me to recognize and hear the parts the seem like to much and the parts that seem inconsistent without details.

The next paper to be reviewed was the Exploratory Essay,  and to be very honest I didn’t understand how to write this genre of paper at all based on the negative feedbacks i have received from passed papers like such. So at first I had to understand what it was. I started to choose my topic which was the Don Quixote effect, then through the teachers description I understand this was an essay to explore a certain topic through credible research. During my review, i was able to understand  that in my first draft for the Don Quixote, exploratory essay the errors that have been made on my page was mostly, run on sentences, being more clear on my citations, and overall having incomplete and broken pieces of information that needed to be tied to together. Overall my piece was very disconnected and random. Therefore my goal was to first bring out every idea I had on Don Quixote and connect them to the articles I found. I first started  off by Correcting the small grammar pieces. These were mostly fixing long sentences to smaller sentences, Then taking out informal words such as “ well” and a lot of “ for examples” to make my essay a bit more professional. Then I went onto reorganize the content I already had. Some of my information did make sense but was just in the wrong place such as an idea I shared in my body paragraph that turned out to be a great thesis. Since I started introducing new ideas and making connections I choose to bring in more credible and overall new sources to have better evidence. This helped build on my thesis more.  I also cleared out my thesis in the beginning and stay focused on bringing in new ideas but connecting my next idea with my new one in order to stay on the thesis topic. The audience is supposed to be my peers, my professors, and really anyone who is unaware of this topic and is willing to learn new information. The genre of this essay is informative essay and the purpose of this essay is to inform and introduce this topic from Russian literature. Minus the small grammars, I recognized I was able to get over for the most part what details to include that will be give more context and what details to keep up because they would just go off topic. Now, for this particular genre my problem was organizing and fin the right structure. The information that I was presenting did not have a consistent flow and didn’t seem fit well where I put them. During the writing process I would find myself confused where to find each sources to flow one into the other. But with the feedback of my peers and teachers, my key advice was to break the sources down and find a key connection between them. This will help connecting and move onto to next source. Most of all I have learned how to structure correctly so things such as my thesis doesn’t not end up being in a body paragraph.

The last essay we had to put through the review process was the the research critical analysis. This essay was the biggest challenge yet. Not only did it include longer word count character but i had to to use one primary source to analyze in order to prove my thesis along with other resources. Although my thesis was flexible enough for me to create, the circumstances we had to write under was a bit difficult. Meaning the amount of sources and writing about other sources while analysis one was a but new. But through the review process I was able to figure out my first draft The Truth Behind Literatures Desires which is a critical analysis essay delving into proving masochists are created through negative past experiences. This position of the essay aims to an audience who holds a position on masochism or someone who are open to understanding a masochists. Through peer review and the teachers review my draft is in general very vague and unclear. It was very incomplete including the thesis. The thesis was at work but not vet clear on the position I held in this paper. My essay also lacked resources or even resources that would better connect to my thesis. The texts I chose was mostly talking about masochism and the culture of it. But when reviewing the essay I started off by creating a thesis that would be clear, which included a primary text I would analyze and the position I hold. I stated “Based on First Love by Ivan Turgenev, masochist are people who do what they do in their love life because it is an effect of their past experiences.” I continue to mention articles that talk about the culture of masochism and later  continue to mention articles that give reasons of masochism. The first reason is because of rat people and how they are traumatized. I follow up with connecting the development of personality. I stated that lack of love and parental guidance and make a person have a negative perception of love. After including five secondary sources and 3 primary sources I continued to conclude by mentioning how my character from my source of I would analyze connects to these different reasons leading, proving my thesis. I have turned to questions of transitions and my characters overall background and present personality to explain his reason of masochism. Although my essay was incomplete, through the amount I have wrote I had a clear problem of incorporating my analysis of my main primary sources throughout in order to prove my thesis. I am not the best at multitasking but through this review i was able to find ways to incorporate everything at once. Since my thesis was “In the  novel First Love the author Ivan Turgenev uses metaphors and analogies in order to present the idea that masochist where people who were doing such things in their love life because it is an effect or reflection of their past negative life experiences.”  I was able to break down the stories, including the minor details i order it to connect it back a secondary source. For example “In the article The Effects of Overstimulation:Rat People  by Leonard Shengold describes Rat people as people who “suffered traumatic overstimulation as children” was the main quote used to explain a part of my thesis. I connected it back to my primary source First Love by saying “Just as someone like Vladimir has been traumatized as s child from very distant parents, he had grown up just trying to please his parents and now worries about how people perceive him and if he will be accepted. He follows that statement by explaining through many observations on adults who have had negative childhood experiences that their “ Patterns of behavior, operating under the sway of repetition compulsion”. In Vladimir’s case he he repeats his past by not taking charge and action when finding out his love is having an affair with his father. This is a repetition of his father getting love from a women he loves like his mother.” Not only does this intertwine the two sources but also brings back the idea of my thesis. This one of the many advices that helped me overcome my problem of how to consistently intertwine tasks like such in order to get my point across.

        Overall, I as a writer have evolved much more than I did in my whole 4 year high school experience. Being trapped with the same consistent genre of writing didn’t help me identify my flaws and strengths in order for me to grow as a writer. But starting with a literary analysis helped warmed up who I am as a writer as well as attack a major problem in writing I knew I had for years but couldn’t resolve.This problem was finding out what was to much or to little for a paper. There also came a main problem of structure and with my second essay the The mind Behind Don Quioxte . But through review I was able to Identify what was details to back my essay and what was my thesis. Lastly there was the problem of My essay The Truth Behind Literatures Desires, in which I was unable to analyze my primary source with my thesis. But through making connecting and finding the key resemblance  I was able to overcome it. The main idea for me is, you can always learn something new whether its about yourself or your academic life. But My journey of Writing didn’t end with that failed 13 page essay in high school, but that was just the bump in path of my new journey of finding myself as a writer.