This essay served as a critical reflection for all three of our essays in many ways. I wrote about the problems that I ran into when writing and how I solved them. It was difficult going through so many different documents to find the problems and issues that I ran into, but as I was doing this, I realized how many mistakes they had. Which brings me to my first point, the editing process of this paper was straight forward but when it came to comparing two or three possible examples and which one would work better in the paper, it was difficult to determine. Similarly, to the first two essays of the semester, the topic was interesting to me, and I was not struggling for words, and instead found it easy to add more words and examples. Second, it was very important to include specific examples from your past essays into this one. Because I had not really looked back at the last three since they were turned in, it was time consuming to go through and find examples that were important to note. When I was talking about my essays in this last paper, I found it difficult to vary my language. For example, when I was using words like paper or essays, I would often have too many of them in the same vicinity, so it made my paper look and sound repetitive. Focusing on my own writing process was very beneficial to me as a writer because I identified the problems I had. Going forward, I will be able to think back on this essay and how the problems that were identified in it could help me in the future. This final paper for the semester was very eye opening and helped me identify many issues and problems that I had with writing, which is going to help me grow as a writer, helping me next semester.

I found this essay to be very challenging. The instruction of the original essay topic was much more hands off than it has been for the past two, causing me to lose key information in the first few days of working that I would have otherwise had. The research proved to be very difficult due to the criteria that you were required to find a magazine and research paper that were related to each other, while also being interesting to you and having a basis on which you could write about them. On the other hand, the engaged readings were very helpful in relation to this paper. The readings were related to the topics of revising and editing, with the explanation of the writing process and how everything happens when working through a paper. I found Anne Lamott’s reading to be especially interesting and applicable when I was working and editing my final paper. Another problem I found when writing this comparative analysis paper was the correct wording of a thesis statement that did not list the main ideas of the paper but still told you what the paper was going to be about more detailed than the other sentences in the first paragraph. The class presentations were a good edition to the process of this paper, but instead of two, I would have rather had a day to work on it in class, in place of one of the presentations. The whole process of finding certain ideas on which to base your essay was very difficult and time consuming, which is the whole purpose of the paper, but was still hard. When reflecting on this paper, the emphasis of things that I need to focus on and improve are my thesis statements, the main ideas and context behind the reason for the paper and using more evidence to deliver my point.

I struggled more on this essay compared to the first one. I had a hard time finding connections from the engaged readings. I could make connections to the readings and the book but had a difficult time finding concrete words or underlying themes. The topic for this essay was easier to comprehend than the last one but analyzing in the book without help of a more dunned down version that was more straight forward. This made it difficult to know the actual inputs that were needed in our essays. After the last essay, I realized that transitions and transitional phrases were necessary for me to incorporate, but I had a hard time finding the right ones for the sentences and how to use them from paragraph-to-paragraph. I still need to work on using more examples from the engaged reading sheets but having them be more loosely related to the topic I was writing about was not helpful. The one big problem I had while writing this essay was evident in the thesis statement and the overall organization of my paper. I planned it out and had a general idea of where each paragraph was going to go, but soon realized that the plan did not count for more than a thousand words. This lack of words made me revamp my plan and construct a different set of points to talk about. This made writing my thesis and connecting it to each point in my paragraphs more difficult. Overall, when comparing this essay to the last, I put in more time and thought into this one but feel less satisfied with the final product. If I had taken the time to schedule a meeting with the professor, I would feel more confident and happier with the end product.

I would not have noticed the number of changes that needed to be made in my essay if not for the meeting with my teacher and the peer reviews. When writing the first essay of my college career, I realized the amount of time and work that went into making a complete and solid essay. While writing my paper there are certain bumps, I encountered that lead me to criticize my own writing and paper. After the completion of my essay, I was very confused about how to properly cite a source and exactly what sources to cite. I used the MLA Handbook to assist my citing endeavors but continued to be confused. My thesis statement was supposed to be an outline for my paper, as I was taught in high school, but the farther I got into the paper, the more I realized how far I was drifting away from the thesis and my beginning ideas. The first body paragraph is where I saw the most trouble between first and third person. I have had very little experience writing essays in the first person and doing so did not feel right, so in the first body paragraph, I found myself constantly trying to use the third person. This ended up hurting my essay because writing in first person was the whole idea of the paper. When I got to the second and third body paragraphs, I started going farther away from the outlined essay, and more on a path of writing what I figured would be better for the essay and work better overall. This led to some issues with the thesis and the connection it had to the rest of the essay and ended up hurting the essay. Throughout the process of writing and editing my essay, I saw the ups and downs of the writing process which ended up doing more harm than good to my paper.