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Mahadeo Singh
Professor von Uhl
FIQWS 10105
12 December 2016
The Final Self-Reflection
Over the course of the semester, I completed various types of essays that included the
literacy narrative, exploratory essay, and critical research analysis. Although I completed the
papers to adequately meet the rubric standards, formulating my papers from the start took a
significant amount of time. Prior entering this composition course, I had many doubts and
anticipation. From the start of my education career, grammar was not stressed enough. It was one
of my weaknesses throughout elementary school, middle school, and high school. As I was
entering this composition course, I thought I would be the only one who struggles with grammar.
Turns out I was not. My experience in this class is unique that I will never forget throughout my
academic career. The variety of essays that I completed throughout the semester has challenged
me in numerous ways that have made me become a stronger academic writer. The literacy
narrative, exploratory essay, and the critical research analysis had many challenges but
encouraged me to improve my writing skills.
For the most part, in all of my essays I faced many obstacles that took a majority of time
to overtake. In the literacy narrative, one of my primary goals was to make the audience feel like
they understood what they were reading. I faced many difficulties to incorporate literary
elements into the essay. Nevertheless, I managed to incorporate imagery through the use of
descriptions as well as literary techniques. Furthermore, in the exploratory essay, I had trouble
finding sources for the essay. Since the topic revolves around South Asian fairy tales and myths,

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it is usually difficult to find sources. After attending the library session, I learned how to find
sources meticulously and I was able to find sources for the rest of essays and assignments in
class. Although these difficulties presented itself in each essay or paper, grammar was the most
difficult to establish clearly. I really appreciate the grammar packet because we went through
almost all the various forms of grammar such as commas, punctuations, and verbs. The grammar
packet has helped me tremendously with improving my grammar techniques.
Combined with the obstacles or challenges, it helped me improve my goals for each
essay. Looking back, I notice that all the challenges I faced helped me to make my goal clearer
and sufficient. Considering all the topics of these essays, I took into consideration the stance,
audience, and the purpose of each paper. After figuring out my stance and audience, it helped me
to create one goal or outcome in the end of the story. For instance, in the exploratory essay, my
goals were to sufficiently explain how Cinderella from the Grimms fairy tales and Draupadi
deals with and portrays strength, bravery, and gall, as well as how they showcase fortitude and
boldness in their stories. In the critical research essay, I wanted to incorporate the theme of
gender roles with the story of Devi. In completing this task, I found sources that pertained to the
topic.
All in all, completing the assigned essays helped me develop new strategies that would be
useful for my academic career and beyond. Collaboration in terms of the peer review is a new
thing for me. In high school, I never did any peer review. Peer review helped me tremendously,
in terms of making sure I am in the right direction. One thing is for sure, I would recommend
peer review in all classes because it helps bring about a topic for discussion and recognizing not
only our mistakes but finding and learning from other individuals writing. Completing the papers
for this class helped my significantly to fix the mistakes I kept making for such a long time. The

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time given for each paper helped me a lot to organize my thoughts and information onto an
outline that I created successively for each paper. Outline definitely helped me when writing all
my papers, especially for the critical research analysis. The critical research analysis was
definitely a time-consuming paper that took a lot of hard work and dedication to complete. In
addition to utilizing the writing center, outlining helped me to organize my topics for the essay
into paragraphs. Outlining helped me to create a precise paragraph structure.
The challenges of the literacy narrative, exploratory essay, and critical research analysis
helped me to understand my goals much clearer and helped me grow as a writer in my academic
career and beyond. Even though I learned a lot from the grammar packet and applied it to my
writings, I still need to progress more on commas and verbs tenses. All of the papers that I have
successively completed in this course helped me recognize my strengths and weaknesses, which
I will work on meticulously, till I master it. I now know what I need to improve on such as,
grammar, and what I mastered, such as formulating a good thesis. In the critical research
analysis, I had a difficult time creating a thesis that encompassed the theme of gender roles and
Devi. Nevertheless, I managed to get help from the writing center and they explained how to
create a relevant thesis towards the topic of the paper. The free writes were also successful in
expressing my thoughts on to paper and finding topics to incorporate into my paper.
The numerous papers that were written during this composition course helped me
understand the reason why we write. I now understand that the purpose of writing is to be
fundamentally ready to express our emotions and thoughts onto paper using out analytical
thinking and scholarly sources to back our reasoning. Writing is there for us to justify or perhaps
even explain our way of thinking and our own stance or point of view on a topic. My reason for
writing is to express what I dont say on a piece of paper that will have an everlasting impact on

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the audience or person who is reading it. I want to be able to make a change in someones life
with just simple words. Writing can change the world, one sentence at a time.