Progression 1 Reflection

When I first learned that we had to write a paper, I felt nervous because I did not feel ready to write a big assignment. I first read the prompt, and we also looked at it in class. I was anxious because I did not know how I was going to write the paper. It was scary to think that I had to write a 4 to 6 page paper, and since it was my first time writing an essay for a college class, it made me more nervous. I became less scared since we spent a lot of time in class going over the text of Rankine’s book Citizen: An American Lyric. We also spent plenty of time going over the prompt and getting to understand what we would have to do for the assignment. The book was a little bit difficult to read, but I was able to understand it better thanks to the discussions we did. Seeing other people’s points of view made me realize some important details I had not paid attention to when reading the text. It also made my understanding of certain parts of the chapters broader and made me realize why Rankine chose the specific structure for her book. Once I had a better understanding, I decided to choose which prompt to use for the writing assignment.

After paying attention to the different prompts, I decided to choose the one that I understood more. Therefore I chose the one which states that Citizen: An American Lyric should be a common reading among university students. Before choosing this specific question, I decided to ask myself the questions on the two different prompts. I then found that I was more interested in arguing why more university students should read it and not whether the book was effective or not. I chose that prompt because I believe that more young people should read the book. It is informative, and it might teach them something new like it taught me about implicit biases and past events which involve microaggressions. After that, I started to think about what to write for my thesis statement, and I decided to go with the way Claudia Rankine wrote her book. She chose a specific structure to give the text in the book a deeper meaning, which is why I picked it to prove my point. I then came up with my second criteria of how she includes disturbing images in the text since it caught my attention the most when I first encountered the book. Coming up with the third criteria was difficult; I even had asked Jacob in SI for help. I then came up with the third reason, which was about her inclusion of literature terms, in this case, similies. After I had my thesis statement, I wrote a rough draft and submitted it for an assignment. After getting feedback from a peer on my rough draft, I made a few changes and added more information as well.

Throughout the whole process of the paper, it made me realize how I question my capabilities way too often. I was scared to start the assignment because I thought that it was too difficult for me. But as I did more and more assignments about the paper, it made it easier to complete the writing paper. Now that I am preparing for the next writing assignment, I hope to build upon not procrastinating and taking more steps along the way, such as doing more research or creating more than one rough draft.