This I Believe Essay Reflection

Chelsea Breihan

ENG 101 – Summer

Ms. Kelly Anthony

14 July 2015

This I Believe Essay Reflection

The part I liked best about this assignment was the when we posted our essays into our writing group boards and commented on each others. I thought this gave me a lot of helpful feedback. It was detailed and thought out which helped me improve my essay. I liked this part because it also showed me what people like about my writing and what I’m doing well. It was definitely a confidence booster.

If I had to pick, I would say my least favorite part was the prewrites. I felt that they didn’t help me too much to prepare for the essay because I wasn’t sure at that point what the end goal was. Now that I know what Ms. A was looking for, I could have done my prewrites a little differently to help me out more.

The constructive criticism comments were very helpful. My peers were respectful and honest when they criticized my paper. One of my classmates said that she really liked my essay but she still had a few questions. I added in those answers and I feel that my essay is a little more complete now, thanks to her comment. I would have never realized that I left out that part.

The workshop would be a good tool if everyone used it. Since there were only a small amount of people in each group and not everyone posted as they were supposed to, the revising process only went so far at this stage. In my group there was only one other person who posted and responded to my essay. While she gave good feedback, it would have been nice to get some from a couple other people as well, but other than that it worked great. I liked responding to other’s because I could think about their writing and learn from it while I’m helping them to edit their essay. It was a mutually beneficial practice.

When someone writes a true story about himself/herself or something that happened to him or her, that’s considered a personal narrative. My essay isn’t about a specific moment, but it does tell a story about how and why I like mornings. I would call that a personal narrative because you can learn about me from reading this essay.

With this essay I’m most proud of how honest I was. Sometimes I have a hard time getting my thoughts onto paper, but with this essay I felt that I shared what I had to say including my exact feelings about things I hold close to me.

I’m concerned about what my instructor will think of my essay. I think my writing is good and I feel confident in my essay, but I hope that this is what she was looking for and that I didn’t miss anything.

The unknown author of “Surfing the Crowd” has a similar writing style to me. I thought we both used similar sentence structure and in writing their words sound similar to mine. This sentence especially demonstrated that: “As I neared the stage, I congratulated myself for taking this leap of faith.” The part in the narrative that helped me the most was when the author personified his music. I think that made it come alive and help the reader understand how he was feeling. “My music had wrapped itself around and around inside of me. It took away my inhibitions and filled me with a new confidence,” (“Surfing the Crowd”).

If I had a chance to rewrite this essay, I would have done my prewriting differently and would have put more time into revising my paper. Like I said, I didn’t feel totally comfortable with my prewrites because I was confused at exactly what we were going to be doing with them and I felt like I may have done them a little wrong.

Work Cited

"Free Narrative Essays - Surfing the Crowd." 123HelpMe.com. 14 Jul 2015

    <http://www.123HelpMe.com/view.asp?id=12935>.