Dear Miss Bone,
I feel like I should show you the awesomeness of how this paper started, considering when I turn it in I am not going to keep the title as it is because it is not in MLA format.
So, I am writing this letter type thing to you to tell you about the ways in which my writing has grown over this past semester. For a while I did not believe that my writing had grown, considering I never felt like I was a decent writer. That was until I looked over my old papers and the comments you had made for them. I guess you never really see your own improvement until you look back over everything that has been done. I feel that there are many ways I have grown in my writing this semester, but I can’t talk about all of them, that paper would be way too long, so I will be sure to keep it down to three. Over this semester I have learned how to organize my thoughts more cohesively, I have improved my transitions – even if just a little, and I have learned how to write a better and more convincing thesis statement.
There are times when I have been writing this semester that I felt like I was never going to be able to write a paper that could actually show how smart I can be and how many actually really good words I have in my head. Yes, I know my organization can still be a little messed up, or even as you said, “Muddled,” (Bone “Summary” 3). Even with this being said, I know my organization skills have improved over this semester. After looking back over my summary paper I can see the places that I just jumped from place to place, even within the certain topic I was going to cover. In the second paragraph of my summary paper I jump from Christmas time to family roots and then to his Christian faith. The transitions seemed to work okay with it, but the organization just was not there. The thoughts seemed to get lost within themselves and just made everything feel very weak over all. In my critique paper as well I can see the places that the organization isn’t as strong as it could be. I found myself being able to keep things organized well, just not as smoothly as it could be. You noted, “How your ideas fit together are as important as the ideas themselves,” (Bone “Grave of the Fireflies” 7). And as I looked through I could see how my ideas did not go well together and how they seemed to bounce from point to point, though not as bad as the summary paper. I am actually proud of how well I seemed to have improved the organization, even from just two papers that felt like they were back to back. Even though my thoughts in my introduction paragraph of my research paper were not as organized as they could have been, all in all I felt the research paper was much more strongly organized than my other two papers before it. A key factor to having good, even great organization is making sure that you have decent transitions. Without the transitions being strong or even logical, the organization of paper can fall apart.
My papers used to have very weak transitions. They still may not be the best, but they have improved greatly. In my critique paper the thoughts seemed to hop around a lot and there were not really any great places that made the paper flow how it should have. You noted, “The jump to the film felt a bit sudden” (Bone “Grave of the Fireflies” 7). There were not many transitions in Grave of the Fireflies so everything did feel jumpy and sudden and did not seem to make a good flowing paper. Everything just seemed choppy and reading back over it, things do not seem easy to keep up with in the paper. On page three of the critique paper there was a sentence that did technically connect the two paragraphs, but it was just one sentence that I honestly probably just threw in there to make sure it was not just a really sudden jump from one idea to the next. “However, disbelief did not take away from pride and patriotism,” is one of the example of the sudden just change that was put in the paper as I tried to make a transition from paragraph to paragraph (“Grave of the Fireflies” 3). There was a transition on page three of my research paper that I am actually quite proud of, even if it was on my revision and I only did it after you pointed out that I needed to fix it. In the original version of the paper I went from talking about child development and how having a good foundation for a child can lead to a better adult basically but then I immediately jumped straight to, “Media play a huge role in the acceptance of everything in our current day and age,” (“Japanese Cosplay” 2). With this there is no mention of children or the development of them or anything even like that. It is only about the media, showing no transition whatsoever. In the revision of my research paper I said,
There are many things that play roles in a child’s development. These things can range from the music a child listens to to the people that they are interacting with. Many mediums that can be used to influence the development of a child is media. Media is a huge influencer of everything in our current day and age (3).
This actually shows a transition from the child development to the media with a way that actually makes sense and does not feel like just a massive jump. Maybe a small jump, like off the side of a pool into it, but not like that terrifying jump off the high dive into the deep end of the pool.
Unfortunately, now is not exactly a chance for me to showcase the awesome transition skills that I have developed, as no matter how long I have racked my brain to find a way to transition this, I can’t find a way to go from how I have improved transitions to how I have improved my thesis statement. This being said, my thesis statements have improved greatly, or at least to me they have. In my summary paper I basically did not even have a thesis statement. Well, I may have, but it was not really one that I could work well with. It basically took up three lines and was clunky. Dirge sentences do not make for good thesis statements. Then in my critique paper, I at least had a thesis statement. There was a sentence there that could actually be followed and used to make into a paper. It was a little weak, yes, even you noted, “Your thesis statement could have been a bit more robust,” (Bone “Grave of the Fireflies” 7). With a stronger thesis statement there could have been more specific details that could have been zoned in on to make the argument stronger throughout the entire paper. So I feel there was at least a little growth from the summary paper to the critique paper. I always tried to take the help and comments you gave me and apply them to the next paper to make sure I was always improving my writing, which I think was a big part of this class, to teach us not only how to write long papers, but how to write well constructed long papers. After you telling me how I could beef up my thesis sentence, when it came time for the research paper, I was determined to make sure I had a thesis statement that was beefy enough for me to work from, but not so much so that it wrote the paper for me. Even though I wrote a decently long thesis statement for my research paper, I think it worked well with what I was trying to accomplish. I was able to go from having a pretty long thesis statement that was not even really a thesis statement, to having a still decently long thesis statement, but it was actually a thesis statement that I could write my paper around so that is some really great growth and progress.
Having growth and progress is great, as we need to continue to grow in every aspect of our life so we can always improve. This also leaves room for places that still need to be expanded upon. I believe one thing I need to improve on is my cultural awareness. I do not always realize how many cultures there truly are around us at any moment in time. If I really think about it, I can see it, but if I do not I am as blind as a bat. I think being culturally aware of what is around you is critical to evolving as a functioning member of society. The more that we recognize around us and how deeply involved it is into other cultures, the more we can truly grow. I would like this to be a thing for me. The point of the Tumblr posts this semester was to improve our cultural awareness and while I did feel it did help improve it, I do not feel like it is anywhere close to where it needs to be. I would really prefer to be able to recognize all the appropriations and misappropriations of the other cultures around me.
So in this letter/Tumblr post we were supposed to talk about how we have grown over this semester and an area that we feel we need to improve on. I feel that in wrapping up an entire semester in one paper, 2000 words, 6 pages, can’t do an entire semester worth of growth some justice. But if we tried to focus on the entire semester and in every aspect that we have improved on, we would be here for hours. I could write a trilogy on every little thing that I have improved on over the semester. Well, I doubt I could, but you probably could. I do not think my growth is measured by how many words I write in a final paper that I am really proud of, but how much I feel I have grown on my own. I can actually write papers that I know are messy, but I am actually proud of. That was not how it was at the beginning of the semester. Maybe that is why the papers seemed so awkward and shaky. Or maybe it was because I was some awkward freshman terrified for my life about the fact I had just signed myself up for an English class that was about writing, and I could not write very well. Whatever the case may be, I managed to get out of that little corner I had backed myself in to of being terrified of writing, to not even minding the fact I had to write a 2000 word paper for my final. The first paper that had to be 500 words seemed like such a huge task to be handled and it freaked me out a little, but 2000 words does not even phase me now. I think that is a huge showing of growth. I can look back and legitimately see where I have grown in my writing this semester and I am really proud of. I have always tried to make the end of my paper a really good “so what” because that is what you always tell us to do, but I have never really understood what that meant until recently. I believe I have grown in a lot of ways and I am really proud of my growth. That is my “so what” and I am happy with it.
