Reflective Essay Example A 1
Sunsets Lead To Sunrises
I am fast approaching a moment I have dreamt of since I was in elementary school. Soon
I will no longer be required to sit through another English class again in my life. Time always seemed to pass extra slowly when dealing with the subject mainly because I for most of my life have I believed that the experiences I was going through were a waste of my time. From the time where I was just a beginning student in elementary school I have always been the kind of person who prefers science and technology, because although different people can produce different solutions to a problem, a person’s answer either works or it doesn’t. I’ve found the
English often seems entirely different because students are often graded on a subjective level forcing the student to appeal to what the teacher wants, and not necessarily what the student believes is correct. Eventually with enough practice I have been able to develop the ability to produce decent writing, but it has been a long process of implementing ideas and methods that usually didn’t seem very important when they were frits presented. In my past, I always figured that answering the questions was good enough, but more often than not this allowed for choppy, sloppy, and disorganized papers.
In revisiting some of my writings from this year of freshman composition I stumbled upon came across a copy of the reflective essay I wrote for English 101 at the UofA. Within the introductory paragraph I wrote that “writing papers for any English class has always been an experience I soon want to forget.” Even after finishing this first semester of college English, I found the writing process so painful that I would still procrastinate writing my paper until it was almost time to deliver my assignment. Because of this behavioral trait, I encountered many people, often far older than me, who would try to argue that if I started my writing earlier, then I would be able to produce a better document, but to me their logic was not sensible. I found that

Reflective Essay Example A 2 my writing was much more efficient if I postponed my writing. I believed that if I started any earlier, I would be spending far too much time thinking about what I was going to write. At the close of this spring semester, I have entirely different feelings about my own writing process.
Starting a paper is still a challenge, but the process isn’t nearly as painful because I can finally produce writings that I am proud of, and confident in. As soon as I began to write papers that other people might actually enjoy reading I had a complete change in the way I thought about and approached writing.
Historically I feel like one of the hardest challenges I’ve been faced with within my writing has been learning how to make my paper flow. I often didn’t even want to read my own writing because everything I had written seemed very awkward. I didn’t know how to maintain the reader’s attention. Just before I began writing at the college level I began to realize that improving my sentence transitions was an integral part of revising my writing to maintain the reader’s interest. This to me is a higher order concern because it affects the overall feeling of the writing. Much of the time spent correcting and writing in earlier years focused on lower order concerns such as grammar, and fluency within individual sentences. Grammar was always frustrating because some of the rules of our language don’t seem to make sense. I’m very grateful for the knowledge I have about grammar, but it only managed to correct errors.
Problems within higher level formatting were always my biggest challenge, and none of these classes taught me how to address this part of my writing.
In English 101 we finally started spending more time focusing upon the higher order concerns of writing. This time the focus dealt a lot with PIE structure, the method of arranging paragraphs in such a way that they begin with a main point, are followed by an example, and end with an explanation. I have seen the readability of my formal writing increase dramatically as I

Reflective Essay Example A 3 have attempted to ensure I followed this pattern. PIE formatting is nice because it entices the reader to keep reading by bringing the important information to the front, while leaving the details until further into the writing.
PIE formatting was good, but I don’t think it’s the most important concept taught in first year composition. From now on, if any college student comes up to me and claims to have a decent understanding of any piece of writing, I am going to feel obligated to ask them about rhetorical analysis. Looking back, I have had teachers share their ideas about rhetorical analysis, but until this semester and the introduction of the rhetorical triangle, rhetorical analysis just seemed like a longer name for any form of analysis. In my case, the rhetorical triangle really helped to bridge the gap between the logical and the subjective parts of literary analysis. I always questioned how I could possibly be graded on analysis since analysis was usually an opinion held specifically by the writer, but my perspective has since changed. I feel at though I can now clear and confident analysis or any piece of writing, which makes a large part of English seem a lot simpler. The improved understanding about writing has managed to really improve my satisfaction in both reading and writing.
With all of my new found knowledge, writing is not nearly as painful. There is no possible way I could have predicted that when I had finally fulfilled my English requirement, I would no longer find myself dreading rereading what I wrote. It seems strange, but for the first time in my life I would actually consider taking a non-required class in the field of English, but in the future I would like to avoid formal writing in an English classroom. All of the training I have received so far has been very focused on formal writing, and at the close of this semester I feel quite confident in my ability to produce formal writing, but formal writing really limits a

Reflective Essay Example A 4 person’s creative freedom in their writing. A class that has more focuses on creative writing styles would probably be the next best step in advancing my abilities.
In the future I would really like to have the opportunity to produce the kind of writing people would actually go out of their way to read. In order to accomplish this goal I know that I am going to need to learn how to best appeal to my readers. I have really enjoyed reading the writings of authors such a Douglas Adams, JRR Tolkien, and Terry Pratchett because they are so creative and descriptive in their writing. I think that if I ever find the opportunity to write a work of fiction I know I will find myself drawing a lot from their creativity and descriptiveness.
I’ve even considered going outside of the standard fields of writing, and moving on to writing my own music lyrics. While I find a lot of the lyrics in popular music to be very week and shallow, I have discovered a few bands who have managed to write some lyrics for their songs. They sing about issues that really matter, and they bring a very touching feeling of emotion into what they say. As a writer I would like to experience this process of writing my own lyrics. I’ve spent years of my life singing, and so I won’t be completely in the dark about what I’m doing.
Throughout my years as a writer I have come to learn a lot. I started dreading writing at a young age, and managed to hold onto that suffering until I had almost completed my English requirements. Now that I’m approaching the close of this sector of my life I feel like a wide variety of opportunities have opened up to me. I’ve come to envision my writing as more than just a requirement, and instead I now see it as a window into an entirely different lifestyle. I’m a very grateful for the experiences and opportunities I have had to grow within my own writing and it is my goal that the growth doesn’t end here, but keeps expanding.

Reflective Essay Example A 5