People develop over time, whether it’s an educational improvement or the improvement of their mentality. Improving educationally, specifically in writing, provides many more benefits than simply learning how to write. You learn to be open to receiving feedback on your writing as well as peer critique, and you gain a new perspective on stories. This semester, I’ve learned how to arrange my thoughts, synthesize, and smooth out my writing with transition words, which has tremendously enhanced my writing skills.

 Taking school online has been very challenging because I’m not a fan of technology. I was never interested in learning about it or how it works until Covid-19 came along and changed everything. I’ve always liked writing, especially on paper, because it’s more effective than typing on a computer. As a result, my writing skills were downgraded. However, taking this class helped me get back on track because my professors’ feedback indicates that I am growing from one essay to the next. This is because, when I look back on my first essay, it appears to be a jumble; I had an idea, but I didn’t properly structure or prove it. Similarly, I struggled with the discussion board assignment at the start of the semester since I couldn’t figure out how to extend and clarify my response. Consequently, I started printing out the stories so I can annotate and brainstorm next to relevant parts of the story so I can improve my writing. Happily, it was quite beneficial because it significantly improved my grade and my teacher’s feedback.

For example, I scored a 65% on my first essay for reasons that I could not understand at the time because I assumed my writing was good. Instead of synthesizing my evidence, I rewrote it in a different style, which is known as paraphrasing. Synthesizing, on the other hand, requires more than just paraphrasing; it necessitates the utilization of various sources in order to generate new ideas based on the analysis performed. Analyzing, the opposite of synthesizing is the process of breaking down a story into small details in order to come up with new ideas. My professor’s feedback was “It is not clear how your claims relate to the essay prompt as there seems to be a lot of generalizations about doctors and families not taking mental illness seriously.  Please make sure to focus your essay via a thesis that answers the essay prompt. It is not clear how your claims relate to the essay prompt as there seems to be a lot of generalizations about doctors and families not taking mental illness seriously.  Please make sure to focus your essay via a thesis that answers the essay prompt”. I took Professor Von Uhl’s feedback into consideration and I made sure I don’t repeat the same mistakes. Therefore, my second essay score was 88% and her feedback was “Amal! This shows a lot of growth and hard work! Great job on the synthesis and paragraph structure. You still need to work on sentence structure and grammatical errors, but this is a great improvement”. Her recommendations motivated me to work harder so that I could improve even more. Additionally, receiving comments from my classmates and family members also assisted me in improving my writing by pointing out errors that I had missed.  Not only does it aid in the progress of your writing, but it also assists you in communicating with one another while taking any criticism or suggestions. As a writer, for example, you will be writing from your own point of view, which may be understandable to you but not to the reader which is also one of the reasons why peer review is significant. 

Furthermore, connecting my essay prompt to my thesis statement made it extremely difficult for me. Later, I understood that you need to a lways integrate your evidence with the thesis statement while writing to ensure that your writing confirms your thesis. Furthermore, your title defines your essay because it does two things: it grabs the reader’s attention and gives a hint about the topic of your essay.   Your sentence structure is also significant since it allows us to express our ideas clearly rather than scattering them across the page. Knowing all of these aspects of writing can help you with future essays. As a result, I’m delighted I earned this score of 65 because it pushed me to analyze writing structures further in order to enhance my writing.

Last but not least, knowing your rhetorical situation is important since it helps you express your idea to your intended audience. Not only does it aid you in making a point, but it also aids the reader in comprehending why you are writing. Knowing your readers can assist you in structuring your writing in a way that they will understand. Because you’ll know what their issue is and how to get their attention. Furthermore, knowing why something was written in the first place is important since you can’t analyze a writer’s logic unless you know why it was written in the first place. To convey a point as a speaker, you must know and be confident in your claim. As a result, having a well-structured essay that included all of the aforementioned parts aided me in creating a strong piece of writing.

Finally, after a lot of practice and editing, I am convinced that I have progressed throughout the course and that I will continue to develop my writing skills. This will be accomplished by taking feedback into account and trusting in myself and the topic I’m writing about. This course covers mental diseases as well as Freudian notions, which is a difficult subject to understand. As a result, this course enhanced my knowledge and writing abilities.

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