Hermoso 1

Hermoso, Vanessa
Professor Corri Ditch
ENG 113A
7 December 2015
Reflective Essay
The beginning of the semester I thought, I knew how to write good essays so being
enrolled in a college writing course was exciting because I wanted to show that I can do write
good essay worthy of getting an A in a college level course. Well did my confidence go down
after getting my first essay back. My first essay I got back, I got my first D letter grade and I was
surprised in why and how this happened. After that day I learned why my essay was so bad, its
because I did not know how to provide textual evidence to back up my thesis and main ideas,
and without that my essays are weak.
The beginning of the semester I can admit that I struggled with this class because it was
hard adapting to a different writing style but I believe that I have made major improvements
throughout this semester. In the beginning of the semester I struggled in creating a well
developed thesis and a thesis that was broad yet specific enough to find different ways I can
interpret it, to have a whole essay written about it. In my first essay Label ME my thesis did
not consider the classs theme, which was gender and my thesis did not have any of that and I put
Gendernormshavebecomeessentialtomylifestyle,basedonthewayIwalk,talk,andpresent
myself.Iactoutthesegenderbasedrolestofitinandbecomeacceptedbyotherswhoare
followingthesameideals,whichdidnotclarifythespecifictopicIwantedtotalkabout.Inmy
revisionofmyfirstessayIchangedthewholeparagraphandredidmytheseandputGender

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norms has become an essential to peoples lifestyles, it guides the people on this world, by
reinforcing the characterizations that each gender is suppose to follow in order to fit in this
shows I made it more specific and changed the meaning to what I was trying to say.
This essay was really hard to do for me because I never wrote an analysis essay
and I wish I had some practice before I entered this course. Another way I improved is by getting
a C on my next essay which was about a gendered based photo explaining how the photo
displays gendered views in society and how we portray them. I worked really had on that essay
and one thing I really struggled in was getting getting textual evidence and making it connect to
my thesis but I believed I did a pretty good job doing it, in my second essay called Women
Speak Up I put, In the article Why so few women CEOs writer Caroline Fairchild, shares
facts and perspectives about how gender does not play a role in a persons capability to lead a
business. Three-in-ten Americans surveyed said that having more women leaders in both
business and government would improve the quality of life for women across the country, this
creates a motive for women to try to obtain a leadership position, instead of just settling for the
alternatives that is promoted by gender roles. (Fairchild) Competition between each gender is
generalized as a goal of individual achievement, or egoistic dominance, in most cases women
are portrayed as born losers because society depicts the dominant gender to be emotionally
insensitivity to feelings of hurt and loss and have a measure of emotional insularity to protect
oneself from becoming vulnerable to manipulation by others.(Devor 42) Women in a sense are
overlooked as being a leader because they are characterized as not filling the criteria of being the
dominant gender. This shows I clearly learned how to cite and create an idea and providing
textual evidence that is relevant to the thesis I wanted to communicate.

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Even though I did not score the highest grade in the class I still learned a lot about the
way I write. What my strengths and weakness are, I do have more weakness than strengths but I
believe I did improve in my writing, I see that I am beginning to get a hang of making relevance
out of my argument and evidence. For example, in my progression two essay I wrote, Women
often have low self-esteem due to frequently trying to fit the mold, that gender norms created
throughout society. Thus femininity, as a role, is best suited to satisfying a masculine vision of
heterosexual attractiveness, as a woman we are competed against other women to see who can
attract more men, advertisements and magazines like Maxim create this message that in order to
be on the cover and be shown off, women must have the ability to attract men with the snap of
the fingers to fulfill the idealistic beauty norms. (Devor, 41) Young ladies see this and they start
to feel like there is something they need to fix about themselves and try to look like the woman
on the cover of maxim, by following the trends and trying to fit the same body type. When in
reality some women are very reserved so advertising women in a erotic way, can really
brainwash men into seeing women in that way and expecting things from women that should not
be expected. And this proves how long I come along in the process of getting a thesis,
analyzing, getting evidence to back it up, and explain the importance of it.
Overall this semester of taking this college writing class was very challenging and
motivates me to work harder next year. I learned a lot about how to write an analysis paper and I
believe this will help me in my future writing classes. Writing an analysis essay is one of the
hardest thing to do for me because finding a connection is hard to find sometimes. This class has

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made me stronger as a writer and as a college student and I know this is only a taste of what lies
ahead. I am looking forward to the end of this class because I am proud of the hard work I put in.