Steffke 1 Emily E. Steffke Sallie Butler 8 April 2014 Eng. 111.

P12 Flaws and Fabulousness A Critical Reflection Finally, it came: Sallie, my English 111 professor, announced that our essays were due next week. I had been anticipating this for a month, mostly with dread and anxiety about how much work it was going to be. However, the night I came home from that class, I was off-thewalls, couldnt-even-sleep excited, for four different reasons. One of them was my synthesis essay. It sounds ridiculously dorky, but I was excited about how raring-to-go I felt about writing the essay. I had decided on a topic a while ago and had been playing around with ideas and problematizing worksheets for a few weeks. Now, it was finally time to write, and boy were the ideas flowing. The entire car ride home, I kept whipping out my iPad to jot down ideas for my essay. As I was brushing my teeth, pearls of wisdom came to me. I lay in bed trying to sleep but kept bolting up to jot down some sort of brilliancy regarding my argument. I felt energized with ideas and confident that I was going to write a fabulous essay. In some ways, I did. I used many techniques that really demonstrated my competency as an academic writer. This started with my solid foundation of a strong thesis statement: Students failure to make connections between what they learn in school and what they experience in life is a major problem in adult education; however, it is one that is not easily fixed (Steffke 2). My thesis was definitely straightforward enough that my audience had no uncertainties about on my papers topic; however, as I review my thesis, I feel that it could have been worded more fluently. In fact, I feel this way about most of the essay. I did not write a

Steffke 2 fabulous, flawless essay. I attribute this mostly to the other three reasons I was excited that night; they all pretty much had to do with the fact that the next day was a half day at my high school and then I was on spring break for the entire next week. I hung with friends instead of doing schoolwork. I got lazy. I procrastinated. I rushed to finish at the last minute and turned in an essay sprinkled with errors, awkward wording, and redundant rambling, and I most definitely learned my lesson. Never again will I put off such an important essay. I still have a lot of editing and reworking to do, but I am okay with that. I am going to put in as much effort as it takes to produce my fabulous, flawless essay. The wonderful thing is, a gleaming essay is not too far off. The essay I originally turned in has a lot of great things going in the meat of it: the deeply critical synthesis, the framework and organization, the source usage, and the profoundness of my penned thoughts. Though scattered with surface errors, I nailed most of the things that really mattered, and my essay demonstrated my abilities as a skilled and competent academic writer. One of the big strengths of the essay was that it demonstrated my ability to undergo effective thinking. I demonstrated this by creatively coming up with a problem and reasons why it was problematic, or problematizing. The main issues I chose to address were why students failure to make connections was a difficult problem to solve, the resulting passive assimilation and lack of critical thinking, the resulting ineffective learning and memorization, and how the issue prevented learning from being empowering and humanizing. I had a lot of focus throughout my essay; I made sure that everything repeatedly tied back to my thesis, such as in my conclusion of one of my body paragraphs when I state, Therefore, students failures to make connections is and alarming problem in adult education because this failure prevents them from being able to be fully human and from utilizing the knowledge they have to make the world a better place (Steffke 12). This sentence fulfilled its purposes of summarizing and reiterating the

Steffke 3 point of the paragraph and tying the paragraph directly to the thesis. This type of focus and reiteration also helped to maintain order while demonstrating my significant thought process. I showed this process by making connections and synthesizing, usually very creatively, many different sources. All of my paragraphs included at least two sources. I also put a lot of my own opinion into the paper, indicating my ability to develop my own ideas, but kept it academic by using lots of synthesis. I addressed many different aspects of the problem and explored the them though different lenses I looked at how a lack of connections was dehumanizing, how it hurt the work force, and how it leaves students bored and unmotivated, among many other things. Within each of these points, I found different reasons for their occurrence and different ways they ensued. By making connections and tying points together in different ways, I made everything I said that much more significant, such as when I connected Mezirow and the MSU study to Alfords ideas. By reiterating the points of previous authors and showing their relations to fresher ideals, the meanings of both were bolstered and broadened to have a wider, more complex scope. I developed a complex perspective by addressing some of the reasons that the problem is not easily solved, exploring those through the synthesis of three different sources, and dedicating an entire paragraph to the issue. Within this paragraph, I integrated Roses issue of how backgrounds affect learning, hooks issue of the importance of dialogue, and Sizers issue of a lack of dialogue, and then explored what happened in the combination of the three problems. I found that with the concurrence of these, my point resulted. Because the underpinnings of my issue are so multifaceted, I showed my recognition of the complexity of the issue. There was also a lot of my own voice in this paragraph; I developed my own ideas at the beginning of the

Steffke 4 paragraph, showed them through my explanation of quotes, and built upon my ideas further by complicating them with each source introduced. I considered my audience in my style choices when writing my paper. I concluded that my immediate audience would be a board of MMCC English professors, who would be judging for competency, Sallie, my professor, who would be judging for feedback and a grade, and my fellow classmates, who would be judging based on an overall impression of how good and notboring it was. I also anticipate that my audience will include college admissions personnel, who will use things I have previously written to judge my skills as a writer and determine my placement within their hierarchy of English classes. All of these audiences give the most respect to essays written in an academic style because it is their classical expectation. I displayed my knowledge of how to write for an academic audience by writing the paper in an academic style and voice. I used vocabulary that my audience would approve of, such as terminology from assigned readings like frame of reference or passive assimilation, and I kept my sentence structure organized. In persuading them of my problematiziation, I used quite a few sources that explored the issue from different perspectives in order to build my credibility. I made sure to explain my rationale for coming to the conclusions I did, and picked quotes based on how well they could point out different aspects of the problem. I used transition styles that the English teachers would approve of as well. My introduction was also geared toward enticing my audiences. I began with a personal narrative because I thought it would be catchy to my classmates and would draw in my other audience, too. I thought they might find it interesting and get them thinking about what connections they have made between the things they learn or teach and the rest of their lives. I thought it would appeal to Sallie because she is a people-person and she loves hearing stories. I

Steffke 5 tried to make it appeal to the group of English teachers by using, and stressing the importance of, an example of how I used skills I had learned in an English class to better my everyday life. I then bridged over to a third person narrative to make the style more acceptable academically, and began a summary of the topics to be addressed in my paper. In driving toward my thesis, I avoided using absolutes; instead, I stated that my issue applied to many students, but not all of them. I also used academically appropriate terms such as autonomous thinking, integration, and deficiency. However, I do need to change my transition in order to make my overview of topics smoother. I then ended my introduction with a strong, specific thesis I thought my audience would respect. I showed my ability to work with sources by choosing sources that helped to further the complexity of my topic. The first source I used was Mike Rose. I picked this author because he was credible, and he talked a lot about the point I was trying to prove: that backgrounds affect the way people interpret things. He told many stories that discussed this concept and provided a good base for the rest of this paragraph to build on. He also added complexity to my argument because he pointed out that background applications are not always helpful. My next source was bell hooks. Her ideals about the importance of dialogue and revealing backgrounds within the classroom provided the perfect bridge between Rose and my next source, Theodore Sizer. Without her support, it would have been difficult for me to draw credible synthesis and show that the issue is indeed a tough one to solve. I then used Sizer to draw a significant analogy between the problem he saw in high school and the problem I was trying to prove. My next source was Mezirow. I used him because he made points that could have many applications, and thus, I was able to relate back to his ideals multiple times within my paper, demonstrating my careful reading skills and adding synthesis and complexity. The following source I used was the

Steffke 6 Michigan State University Collegiate Employment Research Institute. I did not expect to use this source, but while writing about Mezirow, I made a connection between the two sources. Essentially, The MSU study looked at Mezirows issue but demonstrated its significance in a different way. I thought that adding this source would further not only the complexity of what was said by Mezirow, but of my paper in general. John Tagg was the next source I added; I chose to use him because he addressed a different aspect than previous sources of what issues resulted from students failure to make connections. The subsequent source I used was Barry Alford. I picked him because he powerfully supported a claim I made and he related back to a few sources I had previously used, allowing me to draw more synthesis. Finally, I used Paulo Freire. I felt that his influential and compelling work added vigor to the final body paragraph of my paper and that his points related to many sources and ideas I had written about previously, so synthesis including is his ideas would tie together my essay quite nicely. I chose quotes based on their ability to point out any different direction my problematizing could take. I first set up quotes by building credibility for their authors by using credentials or naming prestigious awards they had won. Then, I showed evidence of my critical thinking through the different ways I used quotes, such as for support, synthesis, or complexity, and through my introductions and explanations of them. After introducing the source, I would put in my own voice to add context to the quote and preview how the quote connected to my problem. For example, when using Rose as a source, I included Lucia's background story before the quote because I thought it would help my audience better understand the context of my quote and provide an example of my point. Then, after using a quote, I explained what the quote meant in relation to my problem or what twist or complexity it brought to my paper. In discussing Rose, I integrated my thinking and analyzed the quote to show that I was critically reading and

Steffke 7 reflecting. I tied it back to my main point, interpreted, and emphasized the ways it provided support for my claim. Sometimes, I broke down the quote and explained what certain words or phrases meant within the context, such as when I say, Essentially, what Sartre is saying is that that the way people perceive the world, or their consciousness, is dependent on the way people comprehend and interpret the world, or ways of seeing and understanding (Steffke 11). I also used quotes to support my own claims. When exploring different ideas, I made opinionated statements, then showed that I had critically read my sources by using their ideals to back my own or provide an example of my point. For example, at the beginning of one of my body paragraphs, I stated, Education should be anything but boring and useless. [] It should better lives (Steffke 9). Then, I used a quote from Alford to support my idea: Real literacy is about engaging in your world to change it. Make it what you want it to be, not what someone says is should be (qtd. in Steffke 10). I then would integrate my thinking with my sources by explaining how their example supported my claim, or by indicating that though my source may have looked at the issue in a way different than I had presented it, we were still making essentially the same point, and that I read thoroughly enough to understand that. Then, I did a lot of synthesizing. I synthesized between my own ideas and the authors and showed the relationships through reiteration of my own arguments through their views. Sometimes, I synthesized by using one source to lead into another and then explaining how they both related to my point and to each other. I also synthesized between paragraphs. For example, in the paragraph where I used Alford as one of my sources, I brought up Mezirow after his quote because I wanted to show how he two were related, even though Mezirows quote was two paragraphs ago. Finally, I demonstrated my ability to work successfully with sources by documenting my sources correctly within my paper and works cited page.

Steffke 8 Besides showing my ability to work with sources, my paper demonstrated that I can use proper structure and organization. I kept focus within my body paragraphs and iterated my main topic at both the beginning and end of each. I also used transitions to provide flow and coherence between my paragraphs. I wrote my introduction and conclusion in a style that an academic audience would appreciate, with a strong thesis statement at the end of the introduction. I used proper grammar so that my audience would not be distracted, and I varied my sentence structure to keep my audience interested. My thoughts were displayed clearly because of my writing fluency. Overall, my essay was a decent representation of my abilities as an academic writer. I was hoping to demonstrate to my audiences that my writing skills are magnificent and that I really understood what they were looking for. I think I accomplished competency with my essay because I followed rubric expectations very well; however, I do not think that this essay was an accurate representation of my talent as a writer. I need to continue to revise my essay: the fluency needs improvements, the surface errors need to be eliminated, and the essay as a whole needs to be more concise. Though my essay was nowhere near perfect, I learned a lot by writing it. I really figured out how to use sources not only to reiterate my own points, but to make them more complex. I also think I am also getting the hang of synthesis. I am glad I have the opportunity to continue revising and getting feedback. I have never written a synthesis essay like this before, but I hold myself to high expectations. With the meat of the essay already there, I am once again raring-to-go about revising my essay until it is truly sublime.

Steffke 9 Work Cited Steffke, Emily. Connection, Dehumanization, and Road Running. Mid Michigan Community College. Mt. Pleasant: 2014. 1-14. Print.