Self Assessment

Narrative essay by Eyinade Olugbadehan.

narrative essay by eyinade olugbadehan

This text about my experience in nature caused a self-reflection of growth.  My thinking and behavior compared to the past. The characteristics I once held when I was young looked very cringy but showed the level of maturity I currently possess. The narrative essay I wrote had a lot of visual imagery and description of location because I wanted the reader to place themselves in that position and feel the emotions I felt at that time. The purpose of this was to evoke that sense of nostalgia when we were young, and we would bask in our environment with every small thing we came across. My writing for this essay was not the strongest, and I was a little bit lost on how to write what I thought. The words were not coming out, and I was confused at first about what the main idea of the essay was. I had no central idea and just wrote what came into my mind first. I realized the purpose of the text and how I can send a message through my experience about climate change. 

This particular writing of mine was different from what I wrote. It differed because it had contrast in the beginning and at the end. My experience did teach me a lesson but in the end, was the consequence of choosing to ignore it. It was a bitter-sweet experience. The vocabulary I used in this essay was simple and more broken down, so the audience age range could vary and those with reading disabilities. I used a few unique and rare words not to make the essay feel like academia and appease the reader with ethos and pathos for the emotional but credibility effect.  The writing was in the first-person narrative hence why some words repeat. There are clarity and conciseness in the piece, so it should take not more than a few minutes for the readers to comprehend the text. It is very engaging and makes the reader self reflect on their actions also and how it affects the environment. The style of writing I incorporated into the essay was narrative to explain my experience and persuasion to use my experience to convince the reader about climate change and their actions that affect the environment. Overall the assignments given to us in the discussion board have helped improved my writing by providing insights on how to convey a message to the reader with proper diction, style, and the main idea that is engaging for the audience’s perspective.     

 

Exploratory essay by Eyinade Olugbadehan

Exploratory essay

Writing this essay was a challenge for me because it was not something I am used to despite it being straightforward, which was confusing also. I am accustomed to writing narrative, persuasive, and argumentative essays because of the pattern I am familiar with, and it’s easier to form an opinion regarding a topic. This essay was different because all it needed was just a simple organization of a research topic and the answers to the inquiry. I did not need to go in-depth and was evaluating sources.

But after seeing my mistake in the first draft, I corrected it and applied the lessons from other assignments. I first used Organizational schema on a global scale to arrange my sources to answer my topic inquiry and serve its purpose of informing an audience. By presenting the data in a logical order, the information is shown in a format that is only rational because it makes sense to the audience when it is simplified.

I then followed the Lesson on “Body paragraphs” to help me with the essay to make it easier for the audience to understand what it is about and the purpose. I made sure the topic sentences were clear and concise, so it would not be difficult to understand. These helped to organize the structure of the rest of the body paragraphs. P.I.E was also a tool in helping me write the exploratory essay.

Overall, I should have looked back at my assignments on the discussion board because they help in understanding what the essay is all about. I was finding it difficult at first to write down my thoughts, but I got the basic idea of what to do when I received feedback from the first draft. I’m sure I did not do the very best, but it is an improvement from my initial outline, which was the opposite of the prompt given to me. After I grasped the guidelines in the instructions and made sure to avoid grammatical errors, I followed the standard format and cited my sources. The vocabulary was extensive but well enough to be understood by a sizeable audience despite the Academia language. If I were to write this assignment once more, there would be signs of improvement because I learned much during the process of the work. This type of essay seems unchallenging now, and can not wait to write in other categories.

 

Research Report by Eyinade Olugbadehan

Research report

The research report was my final paper, and it was very difficult to complete the assignment. This was new territory for me because I have never done such work, and it was long. The format for the essay was in APA, so it had lots of guidelines to follow, which was complicated. It took more than 2 weeks to finish the paper, and I feared that I made an error every time I closed the tab to do other work. But with the other lectures and assignments, we had completed in class, I was able to get the concept. The research report focused on a subtopic given to us in a group of 5. We had to do a group project for the issue of Water Scarcity, and individual sections regarding water scarcity. My part centered on the Ecological Impacts of Water Scarcity.  Each student in a group was required to do a detailed study surrounding our work and make a claim that needed to be supported by credible sites. 

The first step after receiving our subtopics was to outline the argument that was to be made. Using the organizational schema we learned in class, I was able to arrange my information in a logical format, so it could serve the purpose of convincing the audience about the urgent issue. We then were asked to gather respectable sources that would support our argument. We needed information that relied on evidence and credibility. This where the rhetorical appeals come in place, which allowed me to place value on what was needed to persuade an audience. Once I had those ready, I focused on following the guidelines provided in the APA format, such as the proper way to cite sources, how to incorporate tables and graphs in the research, diction, and grammar. I focused on the writing strategy of Style, so I could engage the readers with effective communicative language skilled that focused on the topic. Guidance from the teacher and previous lecture simplified the work for me into completion. 

 

 

FINAL SELF-ASSESSMENT

The ongoing pandemic changed the system of my education and my college experience. As a first-year student spending the semester online was hectic, to begin with. I was unsure of how things would roll out since it was a new environment for me. This put me in a constant state of stress because I was not sure about the type of workload I would receive. Due to this, I made sure to be extra ready before the term began, by setting up all my accounts and going over the syllabus. At the end of the day, the events that occurred over a while this semester is a lesson that will resonate with me throughout my college journey. 

The first work assigned to me was a narrative essay regarding our experience with nature. The task was easy to complete because I’m familiar with assignments in this format, and the topic dealt with a subject that included my passion. I loved planting and the environment, so being able to put in words the impact my surroundings had on my connection with nature was simple. Writing this essay was like blood rushing into my head, I felt like my life depended on completing this work to express my feelings on my love for nature, knowing I could share this information with someone else. This essay was very successful since I was able to formulate reasoning in a certain structure for analysis. I used lessons taught in the lecture to help create this work. 

The second essay which was an exploratory essay was not easy. The purpose of this assignment was to prepare the students for the final essay. It was for us to understand and research on a particular topic given to us. This essay format was complex because I could not comprehend it. It surrounded research and critical thinking of a topic to have a better understanding of a subject or problem. The issue for me concerning me was that I kept on making an argumentative piece for a work that focused on investigating a studied problem. After getting the feedback, I found my footing and got clarifications on the difference. This helped me improve drastically on analyzing sources and sentence structure. It was successful in exploring ways on how to begin research for topics and sources to help clarify the nature of the topic. 

Rhetorical strategies and terms I learned in this class such as pre-writing techniques to help with outlining a collection of ideas before creating, composing for a particular audience, and how to incorporate style and mindset in a work. Body paragraph, structure, and organizational skills help with passing the purpose of the information in a better format. This improved my knowledge of completing most of my assignments. The last essay was a research report. It was 10 page APA formatted research work. It was very intensive and stressful. The essay had so many rules, requirements, and format which made the work confusing. This assignment was more thorough, which dived into a critical analysis of the subtopic assigned to us. It was extensive scholarly research of the previous essay to create a proper report. I had to do lots of evaluations to get a basic understanding of this type of essay. This included an assignment generated from it, which focused on the right way to create citations and build respectable sources. Despite its complex structure, I was successful in achieving the goal of examining intensely into using respectable sources, creating long essays that went in-depth regarding a problem, and followed the steps of instructions required in this format.

In conclusion, this semester especially this class was a learning experience for me. I improved my writing so much in many ways and gained new insight into critical thinking no matter the format of an essay. The activities I partook in were very educational and shaped my current knowledge. I learned numerous rhetorical terms, strategies, genres, and practiced the use of citations correctly. The pandemic did limit my movements on hands-on learning and redefined how this term would roll out, but I’m happy for still being able to enjoy and learn a lot. The teacher, my peers, and my determination helped me see this through though it was challenging. I am hoping to have this constant energy and use this new-found knowledge in my other college classes and career. It was a fantastic journey that would later be a fond memory.