Alex Aguilar

4/25/13

ENC 1102

Paper 1- Reflection

The Community- My Struggle

When it comes to this paper, for me, it was no walk in the park. When this class started,

this was the first paper assigned. At the beginning when Joe gave us the prompt I thought to

myself “Wow, this will be pretty easy”. So as just a second semester freshman, I decided that I

could procrastinate a bit with the drafts of the paper, especially sense they were so spaced apart.

So the night comes to where the first draft is due. So I sit at my computer, ready for the

knowledge to pour out of me. But as I sit there, I notice so surge of brilliance. As the time passes,

not even a single sentence floats into my head. I am stunned. I have never been dumbfounded by

a paper before. So time goes by and I am able to just barely scrap up a page worth of material

together. The next day we were assigned to workshop so I took this as an opportunity to get

some feedback on what I could do for my project. I remember I had Sara as my partner so I had

her read my first draft and even she could tell that it was a rather weak first draft. So I decided to

scrap the entire idea. We decided to use the time to really analyze what the prompt was actually

saying. After about 15 min of work shopping, I felt confident in my paper writing abilities. So

that night I sat at my computer again and started thinking. I felt like I knew what I wanted to talk

about but I just couldn’t put it into words. So for the second night in a row I was kicked in the

butt by this paper. So the weeks go by and at the end of it I am just barely able to compile a

paper worthy of putting my name on. Once I received my “final draft” back from Joe, I was very

relieved he comments on the paper. After reading through all of his ideas about my paper, I was

finally starting to find my path to finishing the paper.

Now I chose this paper for my reflection because I think it basically molded me into the

person I needed to be in order for me to be able to succeed in this class. In high school, I had

always been someone that could write papers very well. Even in my first semester I wrote pretty

well, however once I came to this class, the first class knocked me off my high horse. So I

needed to step back and look at my situation from a different perspective. This was when I came

to the realization that I could not write these papers like I usually did. This is mainly because the

prompts were so different from what I usually would write about. The prompts in this class were

extremely open ended. They were left almost entirely up to our own interpretation. This was

something that I wasn’t used to in a writing class. Sure I have been able to set my mind free on

projects but those classes were usually art classes. In my writing classes, there was always a

prompt and guidelines to how the teacher wanted the project. So when Joe gave us the prompt

and “let us fly free” I was a bit lost.

I needed to change the way I did my papers very drastically. I wouldn’t have been able to

survive this class. So I was able to use my ideas into a new way of critical thinking that I call

“spider webbing”. I use it as a way to connect all my ideas so that it almost writes a paper in my

mind. I am able to sort of streamline what I want to be in my paper and how I want it to be

formatted. So far this critical thinking has helped me a lot with my writing. It has allowed me to

write much more efficiently and effectively.

Overall, this class was one that will most certainly be one that I remember for the rest of

my college years. It has allowed me to think in an entire new aspect of writing thus creating an

even more effective writing machine.