Santos 1

April Santos

Holly Batty

English 101

10 December 2019

Reflection

This assignment was meant to make us fix up our essay that we wrote earlier this

semester and see how we can revise it so that the essay itself is up to our writing standards now.

In the beginning of a semester, I knew that I was still struggling with on to create a thesis,

struggling with the brainstorming aspect, and making an outline. Anytime I would write an essay

I would brainstorm a bit then just go straight to writing the whole essay out. I used to never write

an outline or plan out what I was going to write about for each paragraph.

After one visit at the writing center, a tutor there was able to help me brainstorm ideas

and she and I created an outline for my immigration essay within thirty minutes. My

stubbornness caused me to think that I could be able to figure it out on my own but the writing

center actually helped me way more than I thought they would.

While attending one of their Saturday classes, that the writing center provided the class I

attended was about MLA formatting. Before this I used to think I knew how to properly write an

essay in MLA format because google docs had it as an option on so if you clicked on it, it was

automatically set for you but there were little things that I would constantly miss for example, I

would add and extra space between paragraphs and a space between the title of the essay and the

introduction paragraph. I noticed not only essays I wrote for this class but in the past I would

date it incorrectly and use dashes or slashes(-,/). I would forget to put my last name along with
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the page number on the top right corner as well. The professor also gave a quick lesson about

plagiarism and I didn’t know that submitting an old essay can be counted as plagiarism but as

long as you change it up to they way you currently write or change it enough to where it’s not

exactly the same essay then it’s fine.

What I really learned about myself as a writer is that I have way more to learn I don’t

know everything and it’s not a bad thing to go ask for help, in fact it’s better to ask for help and

finish an assignment earlier than struggle and waste more time trying to figure out an assignment

on your own. I really wished I had gone to the writing center sooner and more often throughout

this semester. I do plan on going to the writing center next semester with anything I remotely

need help on.

By the end of next semester I want to be able to confidently write an essay on my own. I

want to continue improving my writing skills and the vocabulary I use. I don’t know what school

I’m going to end up at but I am aiming on USC’s cinematic arts school and in order for me to

make it there I have to improve my writing skills and not be afraid to ask for help when it’s

needed.

I want to be a cinematographer and in this career it doesn’t necessarily focus on writing

but it is something I should be able to do without a problem because I will be taking courses that

will ask me to write and because USC is a private school, I need to improve. But it’s not just

about improving because of a school I need to improve for me and it’s something so simple that

could really help me in the long run.