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Nicolas David Cruz-Araujo

Ms. Sanchez

ERWC Period 3

18 May 2017

And It Came to Pass

Buckle your seat belts, everyone, because in six short pages I am going to teach you a

few things that I only learned in a couple of months, so sit down and enjoy the experience of my

4-am-red bull-induced-self-hatred-fueled-writing extravaganza. Now onto my final essay.

For my reflection letter I have chosen, The Beginning of an Era, A Second Chance,

and A Time in our Lives: Racial Profiling. I have also included the three different pieces of

prep-work, which include an article on the punishment of teens, a different article about arrests in

the United States, as well as the M.U.G sheets that we would complete every Monday. From this

work, I will reflect on what the different techniques that I have acquired such as reaching an

audience, making an engaging hook , as well as making a comprehensive work cited page. My

strengths that I developed this year was having a better understanding of sentence structures and

perfecting the MLA format. Some of the weaknesses that I need to improve on is using the

english grammar correctly and proof reading my essays. I will address my academic essays, and

my capacity of integrating quotes into my essays seamlessly and creating a serious but

entertaining environment through the diction of my essays. As well as using a variety of new

sentence structures which I still need to improve on. My primary goal that I have for my writing

skills are being able to create a dense and informative essay that will inform my audience, but

will not make them lose interest.

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The three main essays that I have included on this final reflection were the Brave New

World essay, juvenile justice essay, and my racial profiling essay. The Brave New World essay

was a literary analysis, the juvenile justice essay was an essay, and the racial profiling essay was

a argumentative essay. I wrote the Brave New World essay in the second semester, after reading

this book, I had a new way of looking at our society and how we are slowly becoming like that

fictitious society. In today's society it seems like we are becoming colder and colder to issues that

affect us all, as a matter of death, they learn to take dying as a matter of course(169). Meaning

that they do not grieve or feel sorrow for the loss of a close person. I fear that we will not turn

into this soulless society of clones. In my next essay, the bullying essay, I talked about the people

who are primarily affected by bullying,according to the National Center for Educational

Statistics, 2015, 24.7% of African American students, 17.2% of Hispanic students, and 9% of

Asian studentshave reported that they were getting bullied at school(Coloroso). These stats

gave me a broader perspective on how kids of color are being singled out and bullied for being

different. This leads gracefully into my next essay which is the racial profiling essay. I talked

about many issues surrounding race and the mistreatment of people of color in the United States.

I talked about the mistreatment and misuse of the law enforcement and how the police abuse the

American people. As I showed an example of the NYPD when a judge ruled that the stop-

and-frisk tactics of the New York Police Department violated the constitutional rights of

minorities in the city [the judge] said that police relied on what she called a policy of indirect

racial profiling(Rhymes). All of these essay greatly improved my skills and slowly achieving

my goal at writing a dense essay that has some substance.

The three prep-work items that I selected was an article called On Punishment and Teen

Killers, the next piece was another article about Arrests in America, and the final item was the
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M.U.G. packets, which stand for Mechanics, Usage, and Grammar. When considering the first

article, it showed me a new perspective on how some juveniles should be dealt with when they

commit a crime. In addition, it expressed a new view on juvenile crimes and how some citizens

give no remorse to misguided teens. Working with my next piece of prep-work the CNN article

dealing with arrests in America, it gave me a source of real life stories and first person accounts

on hate crimes against different races and how the police have to enforce the law without

exploiting it. Lastly, the M.U.G. packets, these packets have greatly improved my grammar

throughout the year, it will definitely be one of the items I will keep after I graduate. These

packets would give me various sentences that are grammatically incorrect, and it would be my

job to correct the mistakes in the sample sentences. Whenever we would do one of the pages on

this packet, I would learned something new every time.

I have learned over the course of ERWC how to effectively use quotes in my essay

without interrupting the flow of the sentence. For example, in my Juvenile Justice essay I cited

the California Juvenile Justice Report 2015 which showed many percentages and statistics of

juvenile crimes in California. In the following quote from my essay, Kids under the age of

twelve had the highest percentage of committing misdemeanors such as assault and battery, and

malicious mischeif witha 40.9% of these juveniles being arrested for assult and battery as well as

18.1% for malicious mischief (Juvenile Justice, 7). The next skill that I was able to improve

was how to write proper topic sentences. In my Brave new World essay one of my topic

sentences started off like, The first topic of the day will consist of the relationships and

intimacy of the world of Huxley and the comparison between our own world. It was small and

concise and it went straight to the point. The next skill was the ability to draw conclusions to my

work. In my essay, A Time in our Live: Racial Profiling, my conclusion sentence was a great
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accomplishment when I wrote it, but it could still need adjustments. The conclusion sentence

read as follows, Because of the violation of our civil rights has well as the law enforcement

being corrupt and misusing their power to take advantage of the citizens of the United States,

Racial profiling should be considered unnecessary and completely immoral. The fourth skill that

I have improved on the most is how to write a relevant commentary after my evidence. In my

BNW essay, I wrote about the aspect of relationships in the world we read about and our world.

The commentary read like, We see this type of mentality more and more in our teenagers and

young adults in our society. We tend to get into multiple relationships , but don't stop to think if

we should just settle down. Finally, the last skill that has greatly improved throughout this year

was the ability to create a thesis that specifically laid out what I was planning on writing about.

This skill is very important in writing essays as it will define how your writing will be received.

As the years go by one of my strengths that I have been conditioned to learn was the

ability to correctly format my paper to the MLA format. This format has been the staple for all

my essays for my entire highschool career. As well as my ability to seamlessly integrate my

quotations into my essay, as this is extremely important to the flow of the sentences in my

papers. We want the reader to read your essay with having to continuously stop at every

sentence. One of my greatest weaknesses in writing essays will have to be grammar. My first

language was not english, and every since I was in school I would struggle with using grammar

correctly. This class has helped me tremendously in my effort of improving my grammar.

Though it still needs some improvement. Another weakness that somewhat falls in line with

grammar is punctuation. There are times in my various essays where I would insert random

commas into my essays where they are not necessary. I am glad that we were given vast

amounts of worksheets and mini-quizzes on punctuation.

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One skill that I could not do was integrating my quotes into my essays. Ever Since I

started to use quotes in my essays I have never gotten the ability to properly integrate a quote

into my essay. As the times change I have grown more accustomed to making my sentences flow

better. As an example in my BNW essay there are many instances where I correctly use my

quotes in my essay. I was covering a topic of how in the society of the Brave New World

children are participating in some type of erotic play, here is the quote, In the society that we

read about children would participate in erotic play at an extremely young age, but to us erotic

play between children [is] regarded as abnormal, but ... not only abnormal, actually

immoral(32). As you can see the flow of the sentence is not interrupted with the introduction of

the quote.

I have noticed that my critical reading skills have not been up to par, as I would like it to

be. When I start working on my essays and I need to refer to a section in a book or article I never

remember where to look for. I definitely feel like my critical reading skills have room for

improvement. As well has my proofreading skills, I usually never proofread my essays, which in

turn I get mediocre grades. I have improved my diction since the beginning of this year.I have

used many of the so-called dead words in my essay, mainly because I am a lazy human being,

but I know I can always improve on my writing.

Onto my final conclusion paragraph for the year. I have learned so many new techniques

and different formats that I can use on my next chapter of life. I have learned to integrate

quotations into my essays, as well as connecting my evidence with a solid commentary. I am

expecting to transfer all these skills once I enter college. I feel like I am ready for the massive

amounts of writing that I will be experiencing in my college career. Even though I do

procrastinate, I do feel prepared to take college writing head on. My cousin, who took this class,
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has told me that it has helped him immensely through his college experience. I will forever be

grateful that I took this class. Thank you Ms. Sanchez.