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Self Assessment

Through my journey in FIQWS 10108, I’ve grown not only as a writer but as a student and a person. This class was challenging because I no longer was riding a bike with training wheels like in high school, I was going straight into Olympic tricks with a unicycle. Through the reading of titles like “Bizup’s BEAM Method”, “The Norton Field Guide To Writing” and “ They say I say” I’ve learned writing is what you make of it, but there are always rules to be followed.
Writing concepts like the audience, asserting your opinion, and having clear evidence is explained in “They Say I Say”. It taught me when writing an essay to clearly state your opinion and what you are arguing for; if failed it would result in “ writers frustration”(Graff and Birkenstein). Which in better words is when a reader cannot fully understand the author’s opinion or side on the subject so they are left struggling to figure it out. After reading that chapter I found that as my main focus in making everything clear and concise, not one wants to read a weak paper. The other concepts of the audience also showed importance; remembering who you are writing for. A paper that if for middle schoolers will not hold the same tone and purpose as a paper for your professor; it is your job as a writer to make the paper appropriate for each audience. However, in some cases there may be the paper is for both people of a scholarly and normal stature and is your job as a writer to make that paper appropriate. In this case, I was writing purely for my professor the papers were of course of a higher standard.
As the class progressed I began to see the importance of reading scholarly work and peer-reviewing. Peer-reviewed, as opposed to you just looking over your paper, offers a new world of benefits, you find yourself catching mistakes in other people that you make. While I may admit it is uncomfortable to tear someone’s paper up with corrections and ways to improve their work, however, it creates a learning experience for you and your peers. As for the benefits of looking at scholarly work, there is no greater benefit of learning from the best. As my professor stated “read go writing to become a better writer”; it allows you to see how your writing should sound depending on the setting and the audience of the paper.
Furthermore, all the essay assignments and reading between both parts of the class allowed me to see how authors use rhetorical devices to speak to the reader. Writing is an art, it’s complicated and doesn’t have its definition and is always a working progress. I found that the pinnacle of my struggle in this class was the CRA essay. In the assignment alone we involved all teachings presented in the class. Learning how to cite work, display evidence and explain it, and also demonstrate our own opinion but also connect it to the purpose behind the other writing the paper. All things had to be balanced essentially in this paper; it was both a challenge and a success at the same time.
Overall this class was eye-opening in the world of academia and college writing; it has taught me to take my time and trust the process of drafting and reading others’ work. Before this class I would never dare rewrite my essay and ask for peer reviews, now I found my self constantly looking for a way for me to improve my writing through a rewrite. As I stated before this class was both a developing stage for me as a person, writer, and student.

The Bluest Eye

“Let it sit inside your head like a million women in Philly, Penn
It’s silly when girls sell their souls because it’s in
Look at where you be in, hair weaves like Europeans
Fake nails done by Koreans
Come again, come again, come again, my friend come again”

Above is a line from Lauryn hills ” Lauryn Hill Doo Wop (That Thing)”. She is highlighting the obsession that black girls have with trying to appeal to the standard of society. We learn in the “Bluest Eye” Pecola is trying to get blue eyes so she can be beautiful, we see her struggle because she is this “dark black ugly girl” from a “dark black ugly” family. We also see the praise of white people like Shirley Temple and with the light skin girl Maureen Peal. The whole story is loaded with black rejection and the effects of racism; all leading to the desire to change for what society defines as better.

Sociology of Ghetto

This image depicts a man starting at close to nothing then turning into an almost complete person. This to me represents the theme Baldwin was displaying in “Sonny’s Blues”. Children in Harlem start with nothing; they have a limit put on them at birth and the only reality left to face is the darkness of their city. However, through reading “Sonny’s Blues” we find the narrator and Sonny himself have grown into people who may be considered to have escaped this horror; but at the cost leaving a lingering part much much like an animal in a trap( Baldwin 5). Harlem is the place it was at the time had the opposite an individual would hope for, you started broken and had to build your self to mean something.

Emily’s Perversion

This image is portraying the death of a woman angel, with a man in the background. To me, it is displaying Emily’s downfall because of her constant obsession with finding a man to replace her father. Throughout the story, we are presented with the phrase ” poor Emily” because of her hopeless quest of finding a man to replace her dominating father figure. Emily’s obsession grew from improper development also known as disruptions in psycho-sexual development; this theory is presented by Freud in his “Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis” in lecture IV. Emily’s disruptions lead to her developing a perversion; this perversion being necrophilia when she slept with Homer.