Valerie Martinez

College Writing R1A, Section 002

October 6, 2017
Paper 2

Evaluating My timed Essay

As expected, my timed essay was a disaster. Some of the neat experiences during

depressive episodes include sleeping too much, low energy, trouble concentrating, and

rumination. Instead of thinking of the material and the prompt, my thoughts were fixated on how

fast I could get the essay done so I could go back to bed. It showed. Though the organization of

my essay was decent, my word choice and grammar were poor and inevitably resulted in the

weak development and critical engagement of my essay and thus the failure to support my thesis.

Generally, at the very least, people have a great introduction and at times that

introduction does not live up to its potential. In my case, my introduction did live up to its

potential because it was incoherent and misleading. There were instances where my word choice

was unsatisfactory and made it quite difficult to understand what I meant or what my points

where. As a result, it strongly compromised my critical engagement and thesis because it did not

make sense. For instance, I mentioned how the narrator suggests that teens are being exploited

by marketers and companies for the work they do online. I was trying to explain the actions

that teens do that marketers profit from but ended up saying companies commodify what they

like on Facebook and other online platforms to make a profit. It sounds awkward because it

seems like I meant what teens like on facebook and other websites but I meant the content they

share and create on other platforms not like. It can be misleading and comprises my critical

engagement because it sounds like I did not understand the documentary. In addition, the

sentence immediately after that I wrote Though companies to exploit youth instead of
though companies do. More importantly, the next sentence I wrote: This documentary reveals

capitalism as a mechanism which creates and maintains exploitation which is what should be

addressed. The words I used and the way I organized it made it seem like the documentary

discussed capitalism. I also used the word which twice. It made the sentence hard to follow.

Also, in saying which is what should be addressed I should have made clear what was being

addressed that I felt should not have been. Overall, it made my understanding of the

documentary very unclear as well as what I was arguing.

In my topic sentence of my first body paragraph, I again have problems. The beginning

of the paragraph is supposed to prepare the reader for what is to come. I tried to say that the

narrator revealed how companies and marketers use the information and content teens provide to

make a profit. Not only did I not transition into the paragraph I also misused words. I wrongly

used the word commit. I honestly have no idea what I meant. It throws off the entire meaning

of the sentence and confuses the reader. I also use the word users instead of teens. I should

have stuck to using teens because that was the focus of the documentary not just all users of

social media. All in all my word choice in this paragraph affected the development of my essay.

My points were not clear so it was impossible to actually advance or support my thesis. I also did

not address the second part of the prompt in which I was supposed to develop what I thought

about the narrator's claims. This paragraph was simply a summary of the documentaries claims.

It may have been unclear that I was summarizing the narrator's claims because I did not use

signal phrases to let the reader know where the claims were coming from. For instance, I wrote

However, there is an exchange. Users spend time I could have said, as Rushkoff noted.

Better word choice and signal phrases could have made the paragraph a little better at its

development and critical engagement.

 Again, my second body paragraph had similar issues as the ones aforementioned. My

topic sentence could have better constructed. For instance, I wrote Rushkoff argued that teens

do receive some time of exchange I should have written some tees , not all teens, receive

compensation for the data and/or advertisement they provide companies. That would have better

shown that I understood the documentary. In addition, I should have been more clear when I

wrote that teens receive compensation for their work on online spaces It may have been

interpreted as in teens get compensated for their work literally on spaces rather that they get

compensated for the work they do online. Again, I also did not use signal phrases nor did I dress

the second part of the prompt. It was all summary without clearly letting the reader know that

Rushkoff was making those claims. All of this affected the development of the essay and critical

engagement.

Though I addressed the second part of the prompt in my third body paragraph, it was still

weak but my conclusion helped in tying in all my points. I spent the majority of this paper

addressing how I felt about Rushkoff's arguments. I did not acknowledge the validity of his

arguments enough. I essentially brushed them off which again weakened my development and

critical engagement. My topic sentence could have been clear to illustrate what my point was for

that paragraph. I wrote, It is apparent that teens are exploited but rather than framing the

conversation around marketers and teens use of online spaces the focus should be on capitalism.

I could have used a signal phrase such as Rushkoff clearly showed teens are exploited by. In

addition, saying the conversation was extremely vague and not a great descriptor. I should

have used a better phrase than the focus should be on capitalism to indicate what I meant by

the focus. All in all, I did an alright job of explaining the basics of capitalism and its critiques.

However, I could have elaborated either in that paragraph or the previous paragraph to strongly
show how that is related to the claims made in the documentary. If I liked anything about the

essay it was the conclusion because I connected my points and made them clearer than I did

earlier in the essay. There were fewer mistakes made so the flow and development of the

paragraph were better. As a result, the critical engagement was not as poor as my other

paragraphs were. My thesis, because of fewer mistakes, was also clearer.

Clearly, when I am not psychologically well my work suffers and being timed just makes

my performance weaker. My essay showed that I was not focused on the task. I made numerous

mistakes which resulted in sentences being difficult to understand. That ultimately led to a poor

development of my essay and critical engagement and the overall failure to create and defend my

thesis. As a result, I would have assume that my paper would have received an NP.