The first assignment of the semester was the icebreaker questions and introducing oneself. The rhetorical analysis essay about the Black Panther Party and the Black Lives Movement was the first project. The second project was about gender biases on Wikipedia. The last project is a remix of any of the projects above. Through my writing journey in this class, I realized that writing down all my thoughts is the best strategy for writing. For my projects, I would write down all my ideas, even if they weren’t amazing. I would later go back to refine my essay. This class helped me develop this writing style. This class has helped me in other subjects as well. As the semester started off with talking about the Black Panther Party, it helped me in my politics class when we had a lesson about the Black Panther Party. It made me more knowledgeable about the topic in my politics class.
One piece of writing I am particularly proud of is the rhetorical analysis essay on the Black Panthers and the Black Lives Movement. A lot of information was given during class that was used in the project. However, I did my own research on the Baruch library website. In the beginning, I had a separate sheet that outlined my thoughts and ideas. The process of writing the essay was complex, but it got easier by reminding myself of the purpose of the essay and referring back to my outline. It got me “in the zone” and not get off track. I think that this essay is one of my best because I enjoyed learning and writing about the topic.
One piece of writing that was challenging for me was the second project about Wikipedia. I felt that there were a lot of topics that needed to be addressed in the essay, which made it overwhelming. I also created an outline for this essay to write down my thoughts and how I would structure the essay in order to not miss any important points. Yet, I struggled with outlining and changed the structure of the essay many times. I feel that the end result of my essay is the best, even though the process was a struggle. From writing this essay, I realize that sometimes the way you initially envisioned the essay might change as you start writing and that is ok. In the future, I will be more open minded and less rigid when formatting and organizing my essay.