Month: September 2021

My writing process for Essay #1 went smoothly. I tried something that I hadn’t done before — I wrote a “shitty rough draft” before going back and editing it myself. I think that it helped me to get everything down before I went back and edited it to make it a proper and readable rough draft. I think for Essay #2 I will follow the same process as it worked out well. It also helps with a time crunch to separate the writing and editing into different days. Peer review also helped a lot. I think that reading over other people’s papers helped me realize what I needed to look for in mine. I also think that the feedback I got was very helpful. I think that I grew a lot with this essay. The new process I tried was efficient and I will be doing it from now on. With this essay, I learned to take my time and that my rough draft doesn’t have to be immediately perfect. I learned that it’s okay to edit your work so many times and that even when you think you’re done editing, you find more things to perfect. Overall, I think that with this essay I really grew into a writer/thinker who plans and thinks things through. 

 

3 Things I’m Grateful For:

1. Getting to see my family last weekend
2. Being finished with this essay
3. The new good writing habits I’ve learned

“Talking openly about such conflicting but important values is just the sort of challenging exercise that any diverse but tolerant community must learn to do.” 

The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, page 274

 

I think that I could use this quote in my essay to talk about how there were no open discussions. Only a few of my teachers in high school were cool with talking about both sides’ perspectives, but only some would just talk about one side or not allow us to at all.

 

“If I was not innocent, then they were not innocent.”

From Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, page 94

 

I used this quote to introduce my thesis. I think that it helps me introduce the topic I’m speaking about.

 

“The arts teach us that there is something that connects us all and is bigger than each of us.”
Necessary Edges by Yo-Yo Ma, page 280

 

I think that I could use this essay to talk about my choice to major in the arts. I would use this to refute the argument of where I was taught the belief that STEM careers were the only way to be successful. 

 

3 Things I’m Grateful For:

1. My best friend
2. The new job I got
3. Being able to go to a Harry Styles concert last week

At the end of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay from Between the World and Me, he writes referring to his school system’s perception on how to act, “if I was not innocent, then they were not innocent”. While I can never fully be able to understand Coates’ experience, his quote still sticks out to me as I was raised in a town where you had to keep a clean slate in order to not be cast out as a black sheep. With this societal expectation infiltrating the school I went to, it made me decide to come to Texas State in order to break free into a place full of different beliefs that won’t tarnish your reputation and interfere with your education.