Some people may be shocked by my openness with making my reflection a blog post but..YOLO

1. I think my biggest improvement this term has been meshing my own unique voice and a more analytically and academic style of writing. If you look at my first essay (Plato/Genesis/Kant), you would notice that it was a lot of opinion and had a thesis that was more difficult to prove contextually. I started this year with the idea that creative thought would get me good grades. This was soon disproved. I think I have improved in making my voice less prominent (although still there). If you look at my Marlowe/Bulgakov essay, my voice is still there and yet I use much more contextual evidence and intellectual language. I am still not at the point where I can just loose my personality, but I am getting there.

2. Although only Megan has commented on the wiki page (and only for two of my essays) I have a pretty good Idea of what have been frequent comments on my essays.

A. My first comment that I feel like i got multiple times was my syntax. I come from a much more “englishy” and creative writing background, so I enjoy using similes, hyperboles etc and I have noticed that in a few of my essays this has caused confusions. This was most prominent in my Antigone essay and my Rousseau one. Both times I was criticized for choosing the wrong word, making my point unclear. I thoroughly disagree with this criticism because this is a very subjective opinion. The english language is involving and therefore we shouldn’t be judged on the definition of words. Awesome by definition means excellent and impressive. I know that in today’s society, it has an argo slang to it, but it is just a great word to use.

B. I have also been told on numerous occasions (i.e every single essay) that i don’t fully explain my points, thus making them interesting and invalid. This was prominent in my Rousseau essay when I did not explain thoroughly all of my points (i.e the first two points). I think that I addressed this in my Carpentier essay and am definitely trying to improve on  this in my upcoming Walcott/Cesaire essay. I think my main issue in this is that I think I have explained my points enough and believe that the reader will understand my thinking and make the connections, but they don’t.

C. I have awesome unique titles and introductions that really attract and grab the reader. This was particularily strong for Antigone and Rousseau. I think that the intro and the title is the most important part of the essay because it is what sets up the rest of the essay.

3. Next term I want to work on two things:

I) I want to continue working on the clarity of my arguments. Not moving on to a new point until the first point is clearly laid out and unpenetrable by counter arguments.

II) This is kind of stupid, but i want to work on my use of semi colons, colons, dashes and commas. I think the use of diction is so powerful and the choice of a comma, a colon or dash can totally change the readers perception of the text.

III) Not hating Philosophy

So there you are, This is my reflection!