Throughout the writing section of our FIQWS class, I’ve learned many things about writing. I’ve learned about the different rhetorical terms, how to identify them, and how to use them to improve my writing. I have been able to achieve each of the course learning items through the different writing assignments I completed for the class, as well as the free writes and peer reviews. At first, my writing wasn’t very strong, in high school, most of my essays consisted of summarizing what I learned. Although, completing these essay assignments has forced me to analyze what I learned to show my understanding of the information, rather than summarize a text the teacher already knows about. 

Through this course, and reading the assigned textbooks; “They say/I say” and “The Norton Forton Guide,” I was able to use the rhetorical terms to identify the characteristics of my essays which helped me come up with an outline to write those essays. I was mostly motivated to write those essays for my grade, but most importantly to show my professors my understanding of the reading and the psychoanalytic concepts displayed within the texts, this also aligns with my purpose of writing those essays. The audience for all my essays were my professors and anyone who was hoping to learn more about texts such as “The Yellow Wallpaper” or “The Bluest Eye” through a Freudian lens. Since in most of the essays, I had to argue about how a certain psychoanalytic concept was shown in the story, I had many different stances in the different essays I wrote. For the Literacy narrative, my stance was that the picture “A Clinical Lesson at the Salpetriere” my stance was that the picture represented the oppression women have always faced throughout history. For my exploratory essay and my critical research analysis, I had to take a look at the actions of the main characters in some of the stories we read in class and convince my audience of what Freudian concept it reflected. Overall, in all of my essays, the psychoanalytic concepts of Sigmund Freud were always mentioned. 

While writing these essays I was mostly able to complete and achieve all the course learning outcomes. With all the different stories we’ve read in class, I was exposed to a variety of genres. I was exposed to fiction with stories like “Super Frog Saves Tokyo,” and “The Black Cat.” I was exposed to non-fiction with Freud’s psychoanalytic lectures. I also read many short stories including “A Rose for Emily” and “Eight Bites.” Since we had to write many essays and each essay’s word count was longer than the last, I had to devise a plan for reading, drafting, revising, and editing. At first, I didn’t put too much thought into my essays, but when I realized that I had to analyze instead of summarizing, I created deadlines for when I would re-read and annotate a text, and create an outline for the essay. When it came to revisions the peer reviews we had to do online and in-class helped me identify problems with my essays, and fix grammatical errors. 

Furthermore, I was able to practice systematic applications of citation conventions because we had to cite all of the sources used in our essays. It was relatively easy to engage in collaborative and social aspects of the writing process through the peer reviews, and because blackboard was the place where we had to upload many of our essays I was able to use digital technology to reach my audience. The library sessions we had for class helped me locate research sources for the Critical research essay. Up until we had that library session, I wasn’t aware that the Cuny library had such a great quantity of research sources for me to use. Also, since we had to use scholarly articles for our Critical research essay, I had to check the sources I used for credibility, accuracy, and timeliness. Lastly, with the repeated practice of writing different essays and getting feedback on how I could have improved that essay I was able to (hopefully) do very well on the Critical research essay, especially when it came to being able to analyze a text instead of just summarizing it. I was able to integrate my stance and make it easily identifiable through the thesis, use the appropriate credible sources to support my argument, and summarize what I needed to, but mostly analyze the actions of the characters in the stories.

There were some fluctuations in my work throughout the overall semester, but I do believe that I have successfully completed the course learning outcomes, and will be successful in my next writing class. The free writes made it possible for me to get my ideas about my concerns for my essays, and the steps I’ll take to rectify those problems down. Being able to do that was a very important skill because it ensured that I didn’t just ignore my problems with my essays until the last minute. My growth throughout the different writing assignments is easily identifiable and I thank the fact that we had to do so many revisions for our drafts. I would say that this class has honestly helped me improve as a writer. 

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