Shania Valdivia

Comp II

Professor Hammett

27 April 2023

1039

Comparative Essay

Throughout this course this semester, I have been required to write only two papers. I will not say my writing was terrible, but it was not the best. I feel like between our two big writing assignments and even working through workshops I was able to write well. With the help from my workshops, I was able to see a lot of where I went wrong on parts of my writing. Even the edits from my teacher that I received back helped point me into the right direction on where to go about my writing. I took Comp I last semester and I had way more writing assignments than I did in this class. I am not sure why in Comp II I struggled so much. Comp I, I had some trial and errors with some writings, but I was able to work through them after my touchups. Comp II made me push a lot harder to meet up with a lot of the standards than Comp I did. Looking back at it now though yes I had harder issues with Comp II than with Comp I, but now I am able to walk out of this semester with more knowledge on writing than I did last semester. In both of my essays I had different issues I was having, so each had stronger parts that the other was missing.

For example, in my first essay which was the argumentative essay, I struggled a lot with connecting my story to the point I was trying to make. For instance, “For colleges to fix this national issue they should make sure their students are safe from rape, they need to remove or at least limit alcohol, and criminals in these situations need the punishment they deserve”. This was the sentence where I attempted to state what side I was on in the argument along with my solutions. Reading this it seems like I am either trying to write about college rape, or just college campus safety. The readers should not have to question what the topic is about. I did so badly to the point where I had to completely rewrite my whole paper. The first final product was not even good. I used my resources from my professor’s notes, and my peer workshop and used them both as guides to help me get the finishing product that I needed. After using the resources, I was able to learn where I had my errors and was able to connect my whole essay together finally.

Moving forward with my second essay. My second essay was about the story, The Zoo. With the goal of making my claim relate to the author and on how he would support my thought I did not quite exactly do that. From learning from my issues after my last essay, I managed to make a claim and connect my entire essay. The only thing was my story was not exactly going the way it was supposed to. After my professor gave directions on what exactly we should be writing about, comparing my essay to the directions my essay seemed like I was using the story to prove my claim on depression rather than proving how the author agrees with my claim on depression. This is where I brought up earlier how each essay had stronger areas than the other. I will admit though, this essay was still better than my last essay because I got an even better grade on it. On this essay I felt like I was able to really connect with what I was writing about more so than my argumentative essay. With my argumentative essay I had more of a struggle of mentally being connected on what exactly I was talking about even though I picked my topic. With the second essay over, The Zoo, I had a bit of a writer’s block at the start of it, but then I got really invested with the story I was writing over and with the topic of depression I was able to connect them both so easily and began writing like no other.

Conversely, my essays got better as I went. My skills developed in English as I wrote more and more. Even after my mess ups and had to fix my problems I still moved forward with my skills. Over this course I learned more about English than I did in my years of high school English and even from my Comp I class. Not only did the essays help me develop my writing skills, but also the resources I was provided with learning about my writing topic helped me learn new writing skills. I learned about things I didn’t even know about. For example, the rhetorical analysis project. I have never even heard of that type of writing involving or even heard any stories about that. With comp II I learned new writing types and what I could possibly write about for future writing projects I may come across in the future. With my love of writing, I was able to find some interesting topics I never thought of using before. Even the workshops were great. Letting other peers read my essay was scary, but I was able to realize that it is a great tool because I get more feedback on my writing that I can use as stepping grounds. As I even read through other people’s writing, it opened my eyes on different writing methods I could even use on my own writing. Just seeing how other people’s writing over different topics was even helped me realize different parts I could have even included on my own writing.

In conclusion, as the semester went on my essays developed to be better. They both started out roughly. I was able to use my critiques from others in positive ways to help build my essay’s foundation to get it to where I needed it to be. After this course of Comp II, I will be able to take these skills with me to whatever projects I may have in the future and build writings appropriate for those times.