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Sydney Brooks
1/13/2015
McCauley
3rd Hour

Exam/Meta Writing
From the beginning of my Senior year of highschool to now, I have made improvement in
my writing skills. Fortunately for me, my writing is not the only aspect of myself that has been
improved. This class so far has caused me to broaden my horizons in many different areas of my
life. I am confident that by further continuing in McCauleys class, I will gain many more
important reasoning, emotional, and logic skills. I have already become more emotionally
intelligent, more ethically aware, and have learned a lot about psychology. All of these things
have helped me grow and be a creative and critical thinker. I am looking forward to all of the
insight and intelligence that I will gain in the second semester of this class.
In my first essay, Emotional Intelligence, I enjoyed the research and finding out more
about narcissism. Because I liked the essay topic, the essay was not too much of a challenge for
me. The essay was flawed because I asked a question, used the words bad and good to oppose
each other, and said you once. I received a 97 on this essay and I feel that my skills did increase
from writing it. I know that it is definitely a better paper than I could have written last year.
In my second essay about Ethics, I liked being exposed to the idea of slippery slope and
learning about the minimum conception of morality. In this essay, I had a major problem with
using parentheses instead of commas. I am not very sure why I did this. For this reason, I
received a 93 on this essay. Otherwise, I am proud of the essay and the ideas and effort that I put

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into it. This writing was much more professional and educated than any essays I had written
before.
In my original Epiphany essay, I had a minor quote formatting issue and did not elaborate
on the stages of anagnorisis well enough. I believe that I did not talk enough about the stages of
anagnorisis because I did not even know how they matched up with the stages of Wills
development in Good Will Hunting. I knew when I turned it in that I could have put more work
and effort into the essay, but I was lacking time. I received an 85. When I asked for help and
rewrote the anagnorisis section to correctly explain the stages of Wills anagnorisis, I got the
highest that one can receive on a rewrite, a 90 percent. Although I struggled with the Epiphany
essay and know that it was not my best work, I was glad that I could rewrite it. I believe although
it was not my best work, it was still an improvement from the beginning of the 2014-2015 school
year.
In my final essay of the semester, I wrote about the book Opening Skinners Box by
Lauren Slater. I am passionate about science and psychology, so I found myself drawn to Slaters
studies like a caged rat drawn to sickeningly sweet morphine water. The Skinners Box essay
was the longest that I have ever written, eighteen pages, and contained heaps of valuable
information. In this essay, I had minor issues with not using commas before my in-text citations.
I also had one sentence fragment, I said the word you once, and had one paragraph about love
that seemed incohesive. I understand, I went a little off topic with my ideas about love, but love
is an important topic that cannot always be expressed eloquently or with much sense. I received a
92 percent on this essay. I believe that in the amount of time I was given, I did a great job. If I
fixed the mistakes in my writing, I would be very proud of this essay. I am fully confident that I
made progress in my writing and knowledge with the Skinners Box essay.

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Overall, I have made much improvement in my writing, language, and emotional

intelligence skills. I think I did a pretty good job on my essays this semester. Again, I am looking
forward to a second semester in this class! Thank you!