Learning Outcome #1: Recursive Process
After taking this class I think that I can confidently say that I have developed my writing skills to the highest level they have been at in four years since the last time I took English in High School. Coming into this semester, I realized that I had forgotten just about everything about the formal writing process that I had learned and practiced every year growing up. I feel like it’s understandable to forget some things after not doing any school whatsoever for the past three years but sheesh I thought the thesis statement was at the beginning of the introduction paragraph at the start of the semester. My first essay on Appiah vs Gladwell was extremely frustrating in the beginning. My rough draft is actually a joke it’s so bad. After I finished my final draft, I copied and pasted my final introduction paragraph and replaced the introduction in my rough draft because that one was so embarrassing I just couldn’t fathom the thought of turning that dumpster fire of an intro in. Honestly though, I kind of just did the rough draft just to do it and turn it in. Like in my second paragraph, I used one quote and it wasn’t even a good one. It was “Twitter Revolution” which was referring to the tens of thousands of people in Moldova that were influenced by Twitter to take to the streets to condemn the communist government of their nation. I ended up improving that paragraph by adding better quotes and double quotes in one sentence such as “neither men nor women were traditionally circumcised,” and “was a barrier to holding royal office.” The bottom line is that my final draft was much longer and way better as well as. Also, my formatting and word choice were exponentially stronger in the final draft. I strongly believe that my essay wouldn’t have been any better if I had actually tried harder on my rough draft but I say that’s cap.
Learning Outcome #2: Integrating Ideas
This essay allowed me to draw compare and contrast but mostly contrast Anthony Kwame Appiah’s “Making Conversation and The Primacy of Practice” and Malcolm Gladwell’s “Small Change.” The ideas of the two authors differ on almost every front. In my introduction paragraph, I introduced Appiah as someone who seeks to have conversations with people that he may not necessarily agree with while Gladwell would rather protest against people that he doesn’t agree with. Their ideas about how we should go about change are fundamentally different because Appiah’s idea is not quite as confrontational as Gladwell whose idea is very in your face and willing to create conflict. Appiah doesn’t believe that conflict is necessary and Gladwell sees conflict to be essential. They came from very different backgrounds. Gladwell didn’t have the luxury of learning about other cultures through conversation because he lived in a time where he had to fight for what was right and conversation wouldn’t have been affected. Although I am more of a fan of Appiah’s approach to change, I chose Gladwell’s because it brings change on a much larger scale and you probably wouldn’t see much change if any at all via Appiah’s method. Some of their ideas interconnected with one another though. For example, in my fifth paragraph, I went on to explain how some people believe that social media creates change on it’s own but it only creates conversation and how social media activism is good at creating small changes since it is low stakes just like how Appiah’s idea of conversation is low stakes and creates small changes. Their ideas on change are vastly different but their arguments don’t work without each other because change can never happen through action alone because there will just be more that ensues and it’s pretty straightforward that conversation doesn’t accomplish anything unless there is action to take place.
Learning Outcome #5+6: MLA Citations and local revisions
Since the beginning of the semester, I have learned many new useful skills that I know will serve me well in the future if I ever have a job that involves citing and things along the lines of that. In this essay, I got the chance to use what I learned in class about citations as I had to site both Appiah and Gladwell’s essays. The biggest thing that I focused on improving in my essay was the introduction paragraph. I didn’t know how to properly introduce the two essays that were the topic of my essay. It took some time but I was definitely able to improve after seeing examples of strong introduction paragraphs. Another one of the biggest concerns I had was being able to transition smoothly from paragraph to paragraph in order to set up the next paragraph. Because that is a big part of an essay. If the paragraph transitions aren’t smooth, the rest of the essay seemingly has less flow to it. An example of a good transition in my essay is the last sentence of the fifth paragraph where I said “We become a more open and comfortable society as we learn about other people’s cultures. This is all important, but as stated before, these conversations aren’t important unless action takes place.” And the next sentence is “Gladwell’s explanations are not fully adequate to impact change in society because both Appiah and Gladwell’s explanations rely on each other. Incorporating both of them in today’s society would leave a profound and long-lasting effect on society.” The sentence in the fifth paragraph sets the topic sentence up nicely.
