My strengths as a writer include my research and ability to find sources that relate to my topic of interest. Throughout this cluster, I have learned to narrow down the wide expanse of resources available to me in order to find sources that pertain to my paper.

One of my weaknesses as a writer is thought organization and structure. For me, the most difficult part of writing rears its head after the research is done and when it is time for the writing to begin. Oftentimes I simply don’t know where to begin. Previously, I would try to formulate a thesis and find points of evidence in my research and mold it to fit my thesis but I recently was made aware that this was the incorrect way of writing and that research should precede the formulation of the thesis. While this certainly helped me improve my writing process, I still have trouble formulating debatable arguments and theses that are beyond surface level. However, I believe this is just due to a lack of deeper reflection and thought. Often, I begin to write the first things that pop into my head, without taking too much thought. This seems like the easy way out, but in reality, this makes it more difficult for me when I try to come up with a thesis that is arguable. However, this problem can be solved by setting time aside for reflection of the subject of the paper.

For this paper in particular, especially in the final draft, I feel like I have improved with utilizing resources and their theses to make a point of my own. Especially through the utilization of Bourdieu I have become more comfortable embedding abstract pieces in my text.

I believe one of my strengths in writing is the actual writing portion. Once I have a well-developed idea of what I want to express, I can usually write it in concisely with a flow that brings the audience through the thought-process of the argument. A lot of my papers follow a logical path from the initial premise to the final conclusion with multiple logical steps in the middle. This has been the case in a few essays I’ve written this year. So while my argument may seem tortuous at times, I think I do a decent job at taking my audience through each logical step.

However, this assumes I have a well-developed idea, which leads me to my weakness. A lot of times, I procrastinate my essay to a point where I don’t have enough time to first have a well-developed idea. Multiple times this year, I’m finding my direction while writing the essay. Sometimes, this means that the focus of my argument shifts as I’m writing, resulting in a disjointed paper without a real focus. I think this is more or less inevitable in writing any essay, but because of time limitations, I can’t fix these mistakes. This was the case for the first draft of this final paper. However, for my final draft, I was able to start earlier, so when I ran into this problem, I had to time to work through my argument again and streamline the essay so that it doesn’t have any excessive sections.

My greatest strength, or at least greatest improvement, over the course of this school year would have to be my skills in organization and research. I feel like the hardest part about writing is finding the meat of what you’re going to write about and this is what intimidates me the most. But I feel like over time, I’ve gotten better at finding scholarly sources (bless JSTOR) and quote weaving important details into my essay. The research that I come across also determines the structure and ideal format of my essay which plays into my love for outlining. Outlining is the only thing I enjoy about writing essays and is key to my organization. Before this class, I would write my essays Introduction to Conclusion and do my research along the way, but now I put effort into outlining before I even write. Over time, I’ve become obsessed with making lists and sorting so I spend most of my time splitting my thesis into buckets and putting key points and research into each one. It makes my essay seem well assembled and put together so that it is easy to follow for the reader.

I would say my greatest weakness for writing essays in general is adding unnecessary fluff sentences in between my research and key points. My subconscious thinks that I’m adding academic analysis, but to an outsider reading, it comes off as if I was just BS’ing my way to the minimum page count. I feel like the only way to add credibility to my writing is if I sound like I’m a scholar by adding more and more information (that is really just pointless details), but it comes off hard to read and I realize I lose purpose in what I’m writing about. In my head, I’m thinking, “This is what a confident writer would say,” but instead, I just confuse the reader. With this essay however, I’ve been trying to remind myself with every sentence and ask “Does this even answer the prompt? Does this directly relate to my thesis?” to keep my essay concise. I think this tactic contributes to the major difference that will be seen between my first and final draft. Another weakness I have (but is not my fault since no one taught me) is writing conclusions. In my opinion, the conclusion is the most useless part of the essay so why even include them? My writing professor last quarter said we’re not supposed to recap what we wrote??, but we’re also supposed remind the reader of the thesis ,?? but also not provide new details?? like what am I supposed to actually say? Send help.

My greatest strength in writing has always been my prose; I’m usually able to “flower” up my essay a lot before turning it in. This has also, however, been one of my greatest weaknesses, since I often use this flowery language in place of real analysis, rather than as a part of it. I often find myself struggling to reach the page count I need and, rather than incorporating more thorough evidence or analysis into the paper, I frequently just throw in some longer, more eloquent words and sentences that just rephrase earlier sentences.

Rereading my earlier papers in the cluster (especially the first one), it’s very apparent how I used this technique to pretend like I knew more about my topic than I actually did, and therefore the paper isn’t as clear and analytical as I would have liked. I’ve been trying to turn this around since last quarter, and I hope that I’ve fixed at least part of the issue with this paper. I’ve put a lot more time into the actual research of the paper (I actually made spreadsheets, which is definitely a first for me when writing papers!) and hopefully it shows in the paper itself. There are definitely other flaws that come into play with the papers that I’ve been writing (I still need to work on clarifying and focusing my argument a bit more), but this is the big flaw that’s been pointed out to me by several of my high school teachers, so I’ve been mostly focused on improving this aspect of my writing with this cluster.

1. My strength as a writer is that I don’t settle with common themes. I think I am good at coming up with innovative topics and finding evidence to support them. At the same time, I think my papers normally have a clear structure, and I am good at expressing my claims and arguments in a clear, unambiguous way. As for weakness, I think I need to practice writing the most specific theses. A lot of the times I come up with a thesis that is too general for the readers to know what exactly I am arguing for until they finish reading the entire paper. I also think that I tend to be absorbed in what I am writing currently and forget to view the article as a whole in the process of writing; in doing this, I sometimes put unbalanced effort on different parts of the essays, making the readers wonder what exactly the main focus is.
2. I think most of my papers written for the cluster has an interesting and debatable thesis; they have a fairly common but clear structure. There were a few times however that my TA told me I need a more specific thesis or that my arguments are underdeveloped, which I believe are my weaknesses in writing.
3. The paper I am currently working on is my trial to explore a new structure of writing. Since I am writing a piece of criticism, which is a less formal type of writing, I can be more bold to make changes such as moving my thesis to the middle of my essay. I have tried to make the most specific statement so that my paper has a clear focus, but I am still working on balancing the work I put in each part of my paper so that the readers would not feel as if my argument is underdeveloped or that I have too much summary in the paper. The cluster writing experience has made me more bold in asserting my opinions; I have read so many papers that starts with a bold assertion and ends with satisfactory argumentation to persuade the readers. I have learned to read between the lines when reading, and I have been able to discover so many hidden meanings under the story plot or movie scenes.

I believe that my biggest strength in writing is my prose. Having taken Latin for seven years, I am comfortable using a wide variety of sentence structures and grammatical forms. This strength is most helpful for the reader(s) of my works, as I believe my paragraphs flow and transition well without using the same structures over and over again. However, this strength can also become a weakness if I am not careful enough. At times, my prose becomes overcomplicated, and I end up with a paragraph-length run-on sentence. Other weaknesses of mine include repetition. I often find myself looking up synonyms during every writing assignment, which I attribute to my constant reiteration of similar ideas that do not expand my arguments.

This strength/weakness combination manifested itself not only in my papers but also in these weekly blog posts. Due to my procrastination habits, I often found myself writing these posts late at night, without much desire to proofread my work. When you workshopped one of my blogs last week in class, I cringed because of how complicated one of the sentences you read was. In my papers, I have also noticed this attribute, but it is less common due to the higher level of proofreading. Regardless, almost every draft of a paper I have written this year has been returned to me with a comment reading “overcomplicated” or “awkward.”

Regarding my most recent paper, I felt like eight pages were not enough to make my argument complete. This feeling could have occurred for a number of reasons, one of which is the weakness I mentioned earlier. My lack of space could easily have been explained by my overcomplicated sentences. There are other possible explanations, but given my track record, this conclusion seems most plausible.

Overall, I think this feature will always be an aspect of my writing. It is my job to learn when complicated sentences are necessary as well as recognize when a sentence is running on too much.

 

This year has been one of the most productive for me as a writer. I think in general one of my biggest weaknesses when writing a paper is actually starting. I have all these ideas in my head that I sort out on paper but when I sit down to write, I can’t start. I’ve always been used to writing a really good paper in one sitting instead of allowing myself to write multiple drafts so it takes me a long time to write something that I’m happy with.I think this weakness was present in my paper throughout the process of actually writing it. I spent a lot of time rereading my paper or even a single sentence that I had just written trying to decide whether I needed it or not. However, throughout the course of this class, I’ve found that it’s easier for me to let myself write whatever is flowing in my head and then go back and decide what I should keep and/or move around.

On the other hand, I have heard that one of my strength is being able to say what I’m thinking in a very clear and concise way. I think this comes from me being a control freak (lol) I tend to stare at my paragraphs trying to find better ways of phrasing things so the end result is normally concise. For this essay in particular, I think I showed a good amount of this skill but towards the end I kind of ran out of energy and didn’t stress out too much about how concise my sentences were.

Overall, I think just practicing writing in this course has made me a better writer than I was before beginning the class. I learned (most importantly) to have confidence in myself and to see the potential that I have when it comes to writing a good paper. I know that in the future I’ll look back on this class and remember how much it helped me improve on my own writing.

My strengths as a writer are research and organization/structure. My writing process usually starts with researching the topic and continues with determining how best to structure the paper. Throughout the Cluster, I have found ample research for papers and have organized the research into a logical format. This makes my writing easy to follow, almost to a fault because, at the same time, this process leads me to focus substantially on the the facts I have researched, and the result is often a summary-laden and non-argumentative paper. Over my writing career, I have learned how to minimize this problem by incorporating more analysis, especially when the subject is literature. However, when I write about media for the first time, I tend to revert to this poor technique. A lack of experience and confidence are the likely cause of this reversion. I experienced it last quarter when I wrote about video games, and I am experiencing it again this quarter as I write about movies. Although this may seem like a step in the wrong direction, it also helps me to know that I am making progress as a writer. These new tests of my writing ability allow me to determine what writing skills I am capable of applying in any context and those that I still need to improve.

I think having the same GSI for the first two quarters of the Cluster and a different GSI for the last quarter helped me improve my writing greatly. During that time, my GSI provided feedback regarding the problems that recurred throughout my writing, which allowed me to focus on certain aspects of my writing. This most recent quarter with Griffin provided me a chance to display my improved writing.

My writing has certain strengths. I am good at researching and adapting my thesis based on it. This usually leads to solid arguments. I also write concisely (when I’m not trying to fill space). My points are clear to the reader most of the time due to my explicit presentation. There are also several weaknesses in my writing. My organization/structure is poor a lot of the time, leading to confusing flow of logic, and distorting my argument. This also occasionally leads to unwarranted repetition. Many times, I realize that my paragraphs are just giving more evidence to my argument rather than furthering the argument. Also, my writing is not “artsy.” It lacks strong transitions, vocabulary, and sentence structure because I care for these things less than the actual content/arguments that I present.

I feel that my strengths have influenced my papers this cluster. I usually start with an atrocious thesis until I sit down and start to do research. After researching, I develop strong theses based on them, and all of my arguments are well supported after revising the first drafts. My weakness in organization/structure almost always shows up too. I need usually move around information and add or delete paragraphs to strengthen my writing. Typically, the paragraphs I delete fail to further my argument. My grammar and transitions are usually lacking because of my lack of attention to them, but these do not concern me as much as my other deficiencies.

My current paper is a good reflection of my traits. The utilization of research is solid. Find the sources gives me an opportunity to practice doing research and adapt my thesis. My arguments are also pretty concise and clear. I feel the paper also helps me address my weaknesses. With Griffin’s feedback I am working on my organizational skills by learning what types of paragraphs can be moved or deleted. I was repetitive and didn’t always progress my argument in this essay, so I am also working to fix the issues.  

As a writer, I’d like to think that my main strength is in my prose. When I write academic papers, I write in a very specific tone that is somewhat fluid. However, on the other hand, my writing itself is usually not as fluid. I am subpar in utilizing strong transitions, so my ideas are not always as well-connected as I would prefer. Additionally, my greatest weakness is within my research. I often struggle with sorting through the information I have on hand. Together, these things create papers that seem sort of together on the surface level but are kind of dysfunctional upon further analysis.

As we have written our papers throughout the course of the cluster, I’ve seen these strengths and weaknesses play a major role in the formation of my papers. Overall, my style of prose has helped with my phrasing and has made my writing seem better connected. On the other hand, when writing the papers on Icarus and Daedalus, I sometimes wondered if my work was actually backed by research or if I was kind of making it up along the way. I wasn’t sure if I was reaching beyond my scope when I spoke of the father-son dynamic between the pair and the significance and symbolism of their relationship within Greek society. Looking back, it’s very likely I made assumptions about my lines of reasoning that lead me to the conclusions of those papers. In general, my ideas were relevant to one another, but sometimes felt jarred when strung together.

I feel that this final paper is definitely putting my research abilities to the test. I don’t know enough about the film industry or film production to really make assumptions and come up with lines of reasoning like I did for my Daedalus/Icarus papers. Thus, my work really has to be backed up with references to, say, what the American Dream really is. I think the overall fluidity of my writing has improved a lot, now that I am aware of how poor my transitions previously were. I think I’m doing a better idea of relating ideas that are actually relevant to one another, and it helps expose which of my ideas need more research for me to understand and connect it to the bigger picture. In general, now that I am more conscious of what my strengths and weaknesses are as I write, I am looking more closely at how they play out in my final draft, and I hope this will help me compose a stronger argument overall.