Jamie Banks

English 2010
Professor Holloway
6 August 2014
Reflection Essay
I pride myself in my writing abilities, but this class definitely challenged me
more than I expected. Without a doubt, I found writing in multiple genres, which is a
course objective, the most challenging. The textbook that we used with this course
was extremely informative. Its the kind of textbook I will likely keep so that I can
use it for future reference.
Our first major assignment of the semester was our argument paper, which
Ive included in my signature assignment below. Its been quite a while since Id
written an argumentative paper, so I found the genre specific suggestions in our
textbook to be very helpful. Id never written a paper on cannabis before, so I was
very thankful for the availability of academic articles in the SLCC Library research
databases. This was actually the first time Id ever needed to use the library
resources, so Im glad that learning how to access them was part of the curriculum
for the course.
As with all the peer reviews I did, I tried to be as honest as possible without
trying to come off as critical. I expect the same of my fellow classmates when theyre
reviewing my work. I definitely think the two most helpful suggestions I gave in the
peer reviews I completed had to do formatting and citing sources properly based on
MLA guidelines. Aside from all the resources the professor gave us, Im lucky to have
access to my former high school Drama teacher who now teaches graduate level
English classes at a university in Oregon. She showed me how to correctly format
different levels of headings for the argument paper; something I had no idea I was
doing incorrectly. I found that my classmates and I were making quite a few of the
same mistakes when it came to MLA citations and formatting, so in a number of my
reviews I made sure that I passed along the suggestions to my peers.
The second piece of writing Ive included below, a commentary on cannabis
and heroin, is something that was fairly difficult for me to write. The driving force
behind it was the death of my cousin on September 17
th
, 2013. He was only 29 years
old and he died of an overdose after a long struggle with heroin addiction. During
the course of researching my argument paper, I was shocked to learn that the
Federal Government considers both heroin and cannabis to be Schedule 1 drugs. Ive
known many, many people who use cannabis for a variety of reasons and not one of
them act in the way that users of heroin act. The fact that those two specific
substances are classified equally makes me very angry. Heroin causes people to do
really scary and inconsiderate things. Michael died alone on the floor of his friends
garage. His friends left him there after taking his wallet and phone. They even drove
his truck to a different location and left it with keys still in the ignition. I know of not
one incident where medicinal or low-level recreational users of cannabis treated
other people the same way. Aside from the potential behavioral issues, it is almost
unheard of for someone to die specifically of acute cannabis use.
The peer reviews I got for the commentary were very helpful. Even a very
simple suggestion, such as my classmates idea to combine two paragraphs to make
one larger introduction paragraph, can make a huge difference. For this same paper,
another classmate suggest that I offer a more clear look to the future to help me
bring the commentary to a close. I hadnt actually given much thought to this
specific aspect before seeing his comment, but that fact that he noticed I hadnt done
it really helped me focus more clearly on meeting all the project requirements.
Sometimes its hard to step back and see your work as someone else might, so peer
reviews are always an excellent idea.
Putting together the final portfolio was the easiest part of this course.
Choosing which pieces best reflected what Ive learned in this course was simple.
Im very proud of my final argument paper, as well as my commentary. I didnt find
it necessary to do any additional revisions on either paper, since I believe I have
already revised both numerous times before submitting them for a grade.
The only course objective I do not think I met is, Work collaboratively on
writing tasks with other writers. Initially, all of these assignments were designed to
fit into a Community Writing Project, but due to lack of participation among some
members of each group, the professor decided it would be best if we worked
separately on each writing assignment.