Silva 1

Alexandro Silva

Professor Ditch

English 115

3 December 2017

Reflection Essay

Writing has never been something that I feel that I never really excelled at. For most of

my schooling writing has always felt like a chore and Ive always felt like if I was given some

more freedom in my writing that I would improve. Coming into college I knew that I would

obtain that freedom and that excited me a bit; receiving the ability to get flush out my writing.

The three main ways in which my writing improved was the death of the five-paragraph essay

and the more interesting and controversial topics that we would discuss and later write about.

With both of these limitations finally lifted from my writing I feel that I was given the freedom

(the third reason why my writing improved) I wanted for so long and as a result my writing saw

a major improvement.

College writing is a lot more different than high school writing and that is because there

is a lot more room to formulate your thesis; this is also why I like writing papers a lot more now.

For example, in high school most essays would give you a statement and ask you if you agreed

or disagreed and you had to state all of your opinion within 5 paragraphs. In college, you are

given a statement and are told to write about, you arent assigned to choose a side and if you are

there are more than two options; something which wasnt present in high school. What I

considered my best essay was a paper I wrote in my 11th grade English class and was about
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Western Expansion and I had talked about how the American pioneers had invade and conquered

the land of the natives and I was marked down on that paper because I hadnt stuck to the

prompt. It was assignments like this that made me hate having to write essays. I dont know

which of my college papers is current my favorite/best because I feel that they are all equally

good. In my opinion, I feel that my writing has always been good Ive just been held back

because there has been a lack of inspiration for me to do it. By the time we get to college we

have already written hundreds of book reviews, movie reviews, analyses on book chapters, etc.

and the oversaturation while I feel it helps us improve it can just get boring. I feel that if students

were given more freedom to write about what they want that we would see an increase in

everyones writing level. I said all of this to preface the idea that my writing has improved to a

certain extent because I have been give more freedom to write about what I want.

The five-paragraph essay is the most annoying aspect of the writing process and because

of this I am making this reflection essay a five-paragraph essay. As kids we are taught to write in

this formatting and it can hinder us at times; there are often times when we have to write about a

topic and you can come up with two valid points but since the essay has to be five-paragraphs

you have to make up a whole other point and that in the long run can hurt your essay. On the

other side, there are times when you have too much to say and you cant decide which points are

better than the others and you end up cramming a bunch of information into on paragraph that

seems to have no real point because you put seven reasons into one paragraph. In one my first

classes my professor had told us that another professor holds a funeral for the five-paragraph

essay and after hearing that I laughed but I was also excited to have the ability to expand upon

my writing in future papers. Having the ability to write out all of my ideas and not have to follow

a specific format has definitely improved my writing.

The final reason why I feel that my writing has improved is the more interesting topics

that we get to talk about and discuss in class. One of my favorite discussions so far was about

political correctness and if having too much of it present could make us into a more automated

society and have a lack of personality. This topic was something that wouldve never even

brought up in a high school because we would be too busy discussing some book or passage that

is supposed to be relevant but was written some 45 years ago. College campuses are woke and

allow us to talk about everything race, religion, racism, etc. where as in high school if you even

mention The Bible you would have 20 school administrators show up and tell you that you cant

discuss such a controversial topic. Woke, according to Urban Dictionary, is a term that is a

reference to how people should be aware in current affairs. The more woke a school is the better

the discussions at the school are. For example, at the Oxnard Union Society they debated

whether Kanye West was more relevant than William Shakespeare which is an interesting

discussion and ultimately it was decided that William Shakespeare (149 votes) was more

relevant than Kanye West (124 votes). The more interesting the topic is the more interesting the

discussion will be plain and simple. This is why thanks to some of the more interesting topics

that I have been given to write about (gender, race, speech patterns, mental illness, etc.) have

help my writing improve.

To conclude I truly believe that the college approach to writing is much better than the

high school approach and as a result my own writing skills have greatly improved. Readers are

the best writers but if those readers dont have the freedom to write what they want their writing

will suffer. My writing I feel has always been good and has definitely improved because of the

three reasons I outlined before. With all these reasons I feel that I have taken my writing to

another level and will keep improving.