Perdomo 1

Stephanie Perdomo

English 101

Professor Batty

29 May 2017

Reflection Essay

After a very eventful semester of English 101, I think that I have become a better version

of myself in terms of the way that I write and go about working on English assignments. Because

of the assignments that we have worked on all semester I feel that my time management is a lot

better than it once was. I have learned to critically think about everything I read because of the

novel we read throughout the semester. Because of the novel Still Water Saints by the author

Alex Espinoza, I now know how to dissect a character and analyze their role in the story. Aside

from critically thinking I learned three new formats of essay writing and that is an ethnographic

essay, a literary analysis essay, and a visual rhetoric essay. Because of these three major

assignments I am a better critical thinker and writer.

The first big assignment we had to pick a mural in Los Angeles and write a visual

rhetoric essay about it. This basically meant we had to be observant and pull apart what we

thought specific parts of a larger picture meant as well as the entire mural. This was unusual for

the type of writing that I had previously done because I have never had to critically analyze a

mural like that. I took Art History in high school so that was not the hard part, the harder part

was to put what I saw in person on paper. On this paper I got a B which was not how I imagined

myself to start off the semester but it wasnt too bad. This ultimately helped me to understand
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that there are errors I still frequently make in my essays such as not having it perfectly in MLA. I

think that this essay really did help me understand how to put visuals into words and painting a

picture in the readers mind.

The next big assignment we had was the Ethnographic essay. This essay entailed that we

go to a specific location in the Latinx community and write about the secondary purpose that it

has to the community. My location was the Valley Indoor Swap meet in Van Nuys. This essay

taught me how to go to a location and almost act as an anthropologist and study the way the

people in that specific place act. It forced me to really pay attention and write down notes in a

very effective manner. The essay that I wrote ended up being a high C which was very humbling

as it was my first C in English. The biggest mistake that I made in this essay was not specifying

the location until the third paragraph. I think that this essay was very fun because I went to a

place that Ive been going to my whole life and look at it through a new lense.

The last big assignment was to write a literary analysis of a character in the novel Still

Water Saints. This was by far my favorite assignment because I really enjoyed the novel. This

was also interesting because I learned how to take apart a character and decide whether or not

they are a good person or not. This assignment was also my best grade with a 49/50. I was really

proud to turn this essay in because I felt that it was by far my best work.

All in all I learned how to write three new essay formats and perfect them. I really

enjoyed this semester and everything it taught me. I think that everything I have learned in this

semester will stay with me through my educational career especially since I am a sociology

major. For example the ethnographic essau was really interesting to me because I try to look at

the world through a sociological lense. Because I learned how to observe people and the way

they interact with a location and each other I can apply that to my sociological studies one day.