As a student one of my biggest struggle would be writing. Whenever it came to this, I never had the confidence that I was good enough. I compared myself to other students and thought about their writing process, instead of focusing on myself. It would get to the point where I’ll breakdown and feel frustrated in myself for not completing a simple task. One of my biggest weakness coming into CCNY is facing English classes and the amount of English papers I knew I would get assigned. As I looked over my first semester schedule and seen that I had two back to back literary classes, I felt stressed already. Looking through the syllabus and seeing the assignments, I felt intimated. I thought to myself that I was not ready for this, high school did not prepare me for this, and I did not know how I was going to handle it.

The first day of classes came around and I was being introduced to both of my fiqws classes and what they expected. I remember thinking to myself that I can do this, and I just need to get it over with. My mindset towards both classes were not the best, I was worrying more about finishing with the assignments than putting effort and asking for help. When it came around to asking for help, I was a bit scared. The thought of having someone else read my paper was nerve wrecking. I liked to think that only I understood my writing and if others read it, they would feel lost. But as I got more out of my comfort zone, I noticed that it was necessary to ask for help. Especially towards a paper that was so long. When I got a second look at my papers, it was helpful for the person to give good and bad feedback. It was a way that I knew what I should fix and improve on. This technique helped me a lot in Ms. Alexandra’s class when we did peer review. It wasn’t just one person reviewing it was two, which was also better in the way that you get two opinions on your paper. During the discussion part in this activity your peers would give you feedback verbally on how to improve the paper. Because of this technique I am now comfortable asking for help from other, whether it be classmates, professors, tutors, etc.

Besides receiving feedback from peers, I had the opportunity to receive tutoring services from the PAL center in CCNY. This was something that not many kids in the class had but for me it helped me so much. Whenever I got a paper assigned, me and my tutor would discuss the ways to break the paper down. With my organizational skills in writing a paper and the help of my tutor we came up with a solution to every paper. We would work together to get my paper to say everything I wanted. Being assigned drafts for each paper was beneficial for me and my tutor to go over. This was to help me clear up a few things I was having trouble with. I spoke to my tutor on what I can do to improve, and if I needed more information. Feedback that I always received back would be to organize my thoughts better. After hearing this I thought about past papers and how I structured them. Also, it put me in a state of confusion because all this time I felt that organizing my thoughts was a strength I had. My tutor explained to me that I should not feel this way because although I can do better in organizing, I know how to write. After years of putting myself down because of my writing, hearing these words motivated me to focus more on my writing and give it the best I can. And I knew that I wasn’t going to be alone through all this.

The first essay that I got assigned was my literacy narrative to put into words my writing skills. As I sat in my desk trying to plan my essay, I thought only negative things. Writing for me has always been a bad experience. How was I going to be able to write about my writing skills if I have always doubted myself? For my essay topic I decided to write about a time where I felt my writing was challenged. My senior year in high school was the time I chose and explained how it affected me. I wrote from how I felt in the class, to how I felt about writing papers. This was a difficult task for me just because writing is one of my strongest weaknesses. In my essay I often explained that I had too much self-doubt and couldn’t find a way to believe in myself. This happens to me often, because I compare myself to others and look at their accomplishments and think about how I can accomplish my own. “I am always frustrated with the thought that I could do better, and this feeling has pushed me to the point where I did not want to write at all”. This line from my paper stood out to me because it emphasizes the idea of giving up. This idea of giving up has crossed my mind various times when it comes to my writing. Having this thought makes me feel inferior. I always think that many students have it easier with writing because it flows easier for them and it makes me feel insecure about myself. I spend about hours, struggling on how to start a paper, on organizing, and making it better. Even though this is what I thought I never gave up and still attempted to write my papers regardless of the thoughts that crossed my mind. I tried to not focus on it and give myself a pep talk that I can do this. During peer review, I received good feedback, which made me feel all the opposite of how I feel about my writing. They gave me new ideas in which I included in my paper. In this assignment I learned that writing is a skill that not everyone is comfortable with, many people have their own ways of writing and I’m still trying to find mine.

The second essay was a bit more complex. An exploratory essay, where research had to be done on a specific topic. The research that I was used to doing was only on google. It’s what I relied on every time and from my high school papers it was a reliable source with a works cited page. As I read the guidelines for this essay, I noticed that we needed three secondary sources from the school library. This was all new to me and although we were walked through on how to find the research, I was still a bit lost. Using the CCNY library is something that I need to get familiar with and with my first research paper I felt as though I could have done better. Finding good and reliable sources was my main struggle. The topic I chose to write about for my exploratory essay was how a lovesick patient was interpreted during the 19th century. My main points highlighted the symptoms people experience, how to overcome this diagnosed lovesickness, and the history behind being lovesick in the 19th century. I also included two literary texts to show how the characters and different settings also shaped a person into becoming “lovesick”. I liked writing about this topic because love is a feeling that everyone experiences. Especially when you analyze it from the point of view in Russia. Something important I included in my paper was mentioning the background information about where this belief of lovesickness evolved. It really ties my paper together and gives the reader knowledge about how this came to be known. It also allows someone to connect it to modern times and how much time has changed. For this assignment, we also had to do a group peer review, with my group we discussed possible ways to fix and improve. My peers told me to organize it better and to re-read it a couple times before giving in my assignment. This helps a lot because when you read your paper out loud, you notice things that doesn’t sound right or are necessary. They also gave me new ideas that I include to relate to the topic. Which was helpful because I was having trouble finding more things to write about. Something that they suggested was the thesis. They helped me write a better one so that it can be stronger for my paper and clearer.

My critical analysis essay has to be the essay in where I experienced what most people call “writer’s block”. I continued with the topic of lovesickness in the 19th century. To me this was a great topic to continue expanding on and give more analysis on how it is viewed from both genders. For my analysis I used a literary text by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I used quotes from the text and put in my research to back up what I was saying. To write a draft it took me about a week to start. My thoughts got to me and to make it all worse, the word count of the essay scared me. My paper had to be about 2200-2500 words including a works cited page. I dwelled on what I was going to write about that would get me to at least seven pages. As the deadline for the draft approached, I had nothing planned. I was also debating if I should start a new topic but doing research for a new topic required a process that I had to start over. I already had background information on lovesickness, and it was something that interested me into writing. A weakness I faced during this essay would be time-management. I was not using my time wisely and did not take advantage of the dates being pushed back until it came to the very last week. I started making appointments with my tutor, professor and tried getting all the feedback I could. This put me on the right track to gather my thoughts and push myself to get motivated. I was also lacking motivation, which is something I do to myself and it’s a habit that I need to grow out of. In addition, even though I had everything down for what I was going to include, the difficult part for me is putting my research into the essay and how I was going to do it. It was more of a feeling that I did not want my paper to sound repetitive and not well researched. Finishing my paper, I felt a bit more relieved because I knew that I had put all my effort to make it an acceptable research paper.

As I wrote these three essays in a short amount of time, I learned so much. I now know how to organize myself better in writing and ask for help when needed. As for the class, I learned that there are different ways of writing. We have different genres, themes, structure and so on. To me it is more on the person and how they present their selves when writing. I gained knowledge on how to approach the audience with my writing, and the different type of audience there is. We must learn how to write adequately to have the reader understand what we are trying to say. I also learned that a thesis is important to be clear at the start of your essay. It gives the audience knowledge on what your essay will include. During my time in Ms. Alexandra’s class I have learned so much. She put me in a state where I analyzed my writing better and thought about the writing process. Becoming a great writer takes its time and many people have different times in where they develop this. Many times, it comes to them easily but sadly I am not one of those people. But I will continue to challenge myself and push my writing to be the best.

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