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Gisella Ochoa

Professor Ditch

English 115

08 December 2019

Reflection Essay

Every writer has room for improvement no matter if you are a published author or a

college student writing a paper. As a college student in college, my papers have had a lot of room

for improvement. In my past essays, given a prompt, I haven’t been answering it very clear for

my thesis. Some of my body paragraphs don’t restate the thesis to remind the reader my main

point or main claim. I’ve also had some trouble transitioning my body paragraphs. Within some

of my paragraphs I’ve been jumping ideas around and it doesn’t make sense. Receiving feedback

from my colleagues, as well as from my professor is great help.

For both of my essays from the topic “Project Text and “Project Space” I was given a

prompt and needed to answer it directly in my essay and have evidence for it. I answered the

prompt in my thesis or so I thought, but I needed to directly answer them so that my argument

was being made clearly. After revising it, I tried to think as if I was the reader and didn’t know

what the author was trying to argue and it made me realize how my answer to the prompt wasn’t

made clear enough for the reader to understand my argument. For instance, in my Project Space
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essay I thought I had a good thesis answering the prompt, but the prompt had two questions and I

had only answered one. I went back and used what I had already but added to it and made sure I

answered both questions so that it was clear. It went from saying “Hill is more centered about the

external space in his life that took over his perception of being happy, while the articles written

by Lama and Cutler, Brooks, and Lyubomirsky concentrate on internal space because they imply

how your state of mind controls your happiness, making it dependent off your state of mind.” I

made it seem like the state of mind is controlling rather than transforming, which is what the

prompt is asking. I changed it to “Hill is more centered about the external space in his life that

took over his perception of being happy and how he uses it to transform into happiness; while the

articles written by Lama and Cutler, Brooks, and Lyubomirsky concentrate on internal space and

how that transforms into happiness.” I answered the type of space and that that spaces gets

transformed. I didn’t go into much detail because that’s what my body paragraphs do. After

fixing it, I revised my body paragraphs to make sure my thesis matched the rest of my essay. I

noticed that I didn’t restate my thesis, so I went back and made sure that my thesis was being

restated to remind the reader of my argument.

After you establish your thesis for your argument, you need to have evidence to back

yourself up. I stated my evidence in my body paragraphs and I was having trouble with the

transitions from paragraph to paragraph. I got help from the Learning Resource Center and now I

know to use a sentence that connects my topic from my previous paragraph to my next one. For
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example, in my Project Space Essay, I had a paragraph that started with “As a matter of fact...”

and went straight into the article I used as evidence. I needed to have a transition into the

paragraph, so I changed it to “Everyone has internal goals and set points but there’s also

unexpected things that happen in life and make you suffer.” and then mentioned my evidence.

So, this made my essays flow better. Throughout my body paragraphs I was also jumping around

my ideas and they didn’t flow because I would just randomly through them in. After reading it

over, I added sentences to make my ideas connect so it doesn’t seem like it's just scattered

everywhere.

The feedback I got from my professor helped me the most to be able to know more of

what I needed to revise. I also used some of the tutoring I got at the Learning Resource Center.

They mostly helped me to know how to transition between my body paragraphs. All in all,

compared to how I first wrote my essay, I can say that I have improved a lot. I know for a fact

that my grammar is better and that I don’t have comma splices or fragment errors, and this is

because I took some time to read through my essay and didn’t just skim through it. My writing

also improved with simple errors I would make like not transitioning my paragraphs accordingly.

Now they flow better and don’t just have random points floating around in my essay. I have most

definitely improved as a writer, but I will continue to be better. This is only the beginning of

improvement.
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Works Cited

Ochoa, Gisella. Transformation of Internal or External Space. 2019. Unpublished Paper.