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Regan Jones

Professor Maple

English 101.29

7 September 2018

Reflection

Everyone has struggles writing a paper. Very few people can write a perfect paper with

the first attempt. Most people have to fix grammar, punctuation, formation, etc., while writing

one. I struggled with a few things while writing my Personal Narrative paper, but I’ll narrow it

down to three.

First, I thought that peer review was the most useful to me while in the writing process.

For me, I love to write, but I don’t always see my mistakes. I don’t always see what I am

forgetting to add or adding to much of. The peer review helped give me a set of fresh eyes. I

think that anyone writing a paper should have someone else look at it before turning it in, so they

have the opportunity to see mistakes that they otherwise would not have seen. The peer review is

also useful because while a professor gives you a few pointers, your peer can work with you on

what you need to work on. During the review, my peer helped me see that I had forgotten to add

indents after every dialogue part, which I had completely forgot about that rule. Peer reviews

aren’t meant to be judgmental and crude, but rather helpful and eye-opening. The writing part

comes pretty easy to me, it is the grammatical and punctuational part that usually stumps me.

Secondly, I struggled a lot with the introduction at first. I knew what I wanted to write

about, but I always struggle with how I should start a paper and smoothly move to my topic of

the body paragraph without sounding rushed. I think with any paper I write, I struggle to write

the intro because it isn’t really prompt. For instance, when writing an argumentative paper, I
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have a prompt and I know that I am trying to prove or argue something. In an introduction

paragraph, I have to come up with it on my own. There aren’t really any prompts. Sometimes,

when I struggle with starting, I call my dad to bounce ideas off of. I don’t realize that I already

have good introductions in my head, until I say them out loud to another person. Sometimes I

also struggle with the introduction because I get in a daze of uncreativeness and that’s what I

need to write one, so I try to come back later and think when my mind is fresh, which also helps.

Lastly, I struggled, but also did well in my writing process. So, before even writing the

personal narrative, I called my mom, dad, and grandpa to help refresh my memory because it did

happen almost twelve years ago. I got all the details I needed to form my body paragraphs. I also

looked at pictures from when it happened to better be able to describe my surroundings and how

things happened. Doing this, helped me to show, not tell while writing. After each paragraph I

wrote, I would then read it over to look for mistakes and corrections I needed to make. After

finishing the paper, I read everything aloud because that really helped me to find mistakes or find

sentences that didn’t really make sense. Lastly, I would call my mom and dad to read it to them,

to see if they found any mistakes or things that could potentially make it better or just sound

better. I know that when I follow this process, there is room for less mistakes and a better paper.

After writing this Personal Narrative, I found that I don’t really like writing about myself.

I like to follow prompts and something to prove or argue, but I did learn important and useful

writing skills to help me write future papers. Everyone has a weakness and everyone’s weakness

can be improved with help from peers and your professors.