Amy Doty

Composition 1

15 July 2018

Passion and the Challenge

As a young child I loved reading children’s books about princesses, castles and magic but I enjoyed it even more when someone else read them to me. That all changed when I went to school and was forced to read all the boring at the time literature that was required. It felt like a chore. This wasn’t the kind of books I wanted to read. They were full of lengthy and unnecessary descriptions. I could never understood how talking about something like single tree standing in the middle of nowhere can take up to 2 pages in the book. I remember trying to cheat and finding some kind of short version of the story and basing my work on that.

It wasn’t till my teen years when I finally picked up one of the Stephen Kings books from the public library. Oh my!. That changed my whole perspective about reading. I quickly found out that I could read 300 hundred pages, cover to cover, in two days if it interest me. I got into all kinds of horror and psychological stories. They were dark and creepy. Stories that would keep me on my toes at all times, taking me places you would never want to find yourself in and playing tricks on my mind. These were the books I would give up my dinners and my sleep for. I remember laying for hours on my bed transferring myself into this unknown world, anxiously waiting for what’s going to unfold next. 

I moved to United States at age of 24. With English being my second language my reading came to an end for a while. It wasn’t that I lost interest in it, but simply my reading skills were not good enough to go through a book without getting frustrated. Living in Poland I was exposed to English on daily bases. I would listen to English songs on the radio, watching English video clips and English movies with a polish translator. Even going to the movie theater was bizarre. Movie would be playing in English and I would have to read Polish captions on the bottom. You would think after growing up with English in a background and having to take classes in high school and college I should be fluent in reading and writing right?. Wrong. Back then I was thought British English so when I came here 14 years ago I noticed that a lot of words are pronounced not the way I’ve learned. I would get those confused looks from people when I talked and I could not figure it out why. A lot of my conversations would include my hands and phrases like:”you know what I’m trying to say, come on help me out here”. Needles to say I could not read or write on the level I needed and wanted to. That’s when I decided I need to do something about it. I started reading dictionary. I would write words out that I didn’t know (there was a lot of them), and read my list over and over again. Conversations with people I met played a big role in my journey with English. The more people I meet and the more time I spent around Americans the better results I was getting. Finally the day came when I felt confident enough to pick up a book again. That opened the whole new world of words a phrases for me.

At times writing and reading can still be a challenge for me. Considering that a lot of words in English are spelled the same but pronounced different and have different meanings like: bat the animal and bat to hit the ball with. Or the ones that are pronounced the same but spelled different like: flower and flour or to and two. My family, friends and coworkers have a lot of fun when I try to say one thing and something else comes out. 

I came a long way from when I first started and now I can read anything my heart desires. Writing is a little different story but with the help of my professor Amy Doty I will get to where I need to be.

 

As my first experience with English class, I got to explore on a social issue that I care about and that's controversial enough to be worthy of writing and reading about. Going back to my first few classes, I see my professors' reasoning behind all these little silly essays" I thought " she had me write. Little that I knew she had this master plan I the works to get me familiar and prepared for my first big writing experience. Choosing a topic wasn't very hard since I can relate to it with my own experience. So picking immigration was not a brainer for me. Since I couldn't use any research yet, I wrote about what I knew, what I experienced myself and what I observed around me. I truly can't wait to go deep into researching the issue to educate myself, so I can educate others.  

At first, I poured myself onto the white paper just, so I can see a lot of blue ink on it. When I see a couple of pages full of words it's always very reassuring for me because there might be something in there I can create out of that. I wrote about everything I knew without making any sense of it. I knew what my thesis was, but I had to find a right way to dress it appropriately, so every reader had no doubts about it. Then I went back and picked the strong points that I thought I should base my paper on. Once I decided on that, I reflected on each one of them and expanded my horizons a little, trying to give credible reasons for my statements. When my first shitty draft was complete I submitted it to Smarthinking for any suggestions on my content development, as well as my introduction and conclusion. I received a great feedback on my grammar, which I know is not my strong side, as well on the choice of wording. My tutor also points out some sentences that did not make sense as written and did not reflect what I was trying to say. She suggested checking some facts and citing the sources, which I did not do since it doesn't belong in this paper. She stated that I had a good writing strength as well as strong points on how to fix our immigration system. After applying her suggestions and revising the ideas and sentences, I turned my paper to my coworker for proofreading to find any grammar mistakes. After peer review, my final step was to submit my work to grammarly.com. I have to say, I had no idea website like that existed and now we are best friends. 

I think the process I used to write this essay is very fitting for me and it helped me pass through this paper without anxiety and headaches. It helps to make the little steps first to learn how to walk later. Everything I've done to this point in class turned out to be very beneficial in writing my position paper.  I think pointing out my own experiences in one of my examples makes my work more credible and adds passion to my essay.  

By presenting my essay to anyone who will have a chance to read it, I hope to bring more light on the subject, educate about the real nightmares that many of the immigrant’s face, and convince fellow Americans that legal immigration while controlled is a good thing for our country, and we should be supporting it not fighting it. At the same time, I hope to learn about both sides of the issue to better understand all the good and bad that comes with legal and illegal immigration.  

 

Once I had all his thoughts on the paper I circled the main 4 reasons that I thought were strong enough to elaborate on and write about my next paper on. My interviewee had a very clear stance on the topic which helped me with creating my introduction and conclusion. He also gave many examples and real-life stories to back up his statements. The one thing I had struggled with was writing an analysis on every reason I wrote about. I didn't know how to analyze without sounding judgmental and come across like I'm arguing with his point of view.

I received some feedback from smarthinking tutor but only used a couple of the suggestions. My tutor didn't think my thesis statement was very clear but I was pretty confident that it said exactly what I intended to say. I did work on my comma slices, run on sentences and expanded more on one of my paragraphs as suggested by the tutor. I think correcting all these problems made my interviewee's reasoning more clear for the reader.  

By initially choosing the strongest of the reasons that my interviewee gave me, helped me find ways to expand my essay and gave me a lot of ideas about what I want to include in this paper. I think writing this essay gives me a very solid base on getting into my next portion of immigration journey. I'm excited about arguing my interviewees' reasons and finding holes in his logic but I'm also eager to learn about my own bias while tackling his opinions. I would like everyone who will read my paper to realize that not everything is always black or white.

It finally came the time of my writing carrier in Composition class to argue what I believe in. I have to admit as excited I was to do that this assignment was the most troubling for me. Even though I knew what the opposing views were I had a hard time organizing my thoughts to sound credible and convincing. It seems much easier to just talk about your views or someone else's views separately. Putting them all together and trying to find holes in their logic that is where the challenge begins. One thing I realized is that using my own life experiences made my argument essay sound more real and personal. 

I decided on narrative from my life experiences for introduction following by short background of my issue I'm writing about. I looked at my interviewees opposing points from my previous essay and I used a couple of my own reasons to argue with each of these points in separate paragraphs. With each reason, I tried to diminish the opposing view by showing the other side of the spectrum that someone might not see or think about. Using experiences from my past made it easier for me to argue the opposition views. I decided on a little different outline then it was suggested in class. I thought it will help me more to expand on my reasons and illustrate better what I want the reader to feel while reading the essay.  

I reached out to Smarthinking for some suggestions and received a couple of good pointers.  One of my paragraphs wasn't really related to the topic sentence so I rewrote it and moved some things around to other paragraphs that were more related to the topic. Based on some other suggestions I’ve noticed that the tutor did not understand my outline. He could not see the two-part introduction and the thesis on the very end and he wanted me to use the outline we talked about in class. I decided not to go that route and continue my own experiment. He also wanted me to summarize my reasons in the conclusion which I decided against. I was confident that my conclusion plays its role without mentioning the reasons again.

I hope that my readers will see my way of thinking the same way I do. I realize that choosing a different outline for my paper might be a little challenging to get the gist of it and follow the thought process but I trust that my own experiences will make everything more transparent. I would like my readers to see things from a perspective of a legal immigrant like myself and set aside what the society pushes for us to believe.

My final destination is finally here. The 4^th essay on the immigration issue has arrived and it won't rest till it gets finished. It is waiting with the great anticipation to find great sources to support its ideas. But for real it is me that cannot wait to be able to use other intelligent and educated work of other authors to back up what I believe and what I think it's right. This was a long journey to get to where I am now. I've learned a lot of valuable information about the immigration in America along the way. It started with what I thought I knew and observed but then after interviewing someone with different perspectives than mine, my focus switched a little. I started to think that maybe I wasn't right and maybe I didn't have all my facts straight. But then something unexpected happened. 

I started researching valuable and credible sources on my topic leaving out all the bias news and articles. At first, I wasn't able to find anything that was convincing enough to support my thesis and my reasons so I kept reading article after article.  Finally, I got on the right track and came across a lot of great material. After printing about 20 different sources I started sifting through in search of evidence for my reasons that I already highlighted. Knowing what I was looking for made it so much easier and fortunately or maybe, unfortunately, I found more than I was able to use in my work. The quotes were so much what I was trying to say that I wanted to use them all. In the end, I misbehaved just a little. As much as I always try to follow the instructions I could not help myself and I used a couple more sources than I was supposed to. I can only hope that after reading how well they support my case my professor will forgive my madness. I could not ask for a better statistic showing that my writing was not bias. I did use some of my previous paper because I thought it goes really well with the flow of my 4^th essay. I did change the story for my introduction from my argument paper as well as the conclusion to play on my readers' emotions.

Once the draft was complete I sent it for a review to Smathinking. After a prompt response, I went back to work on necessary changes. As I suspected one of my sections had too many quotes telling the story so I illustrated the same idea with my own words. I also worked on citations that weren't correct. Upon the completion, I loaded it to Turnitin and I actually felt really good about it. I fell really proud of my work and I hope that it will convince the hostile crowd that disagrees with immigration movement that it is not exactly like the media pictures it. I am really glad I got to work on this issue. I fell so much more educated on this topic that now when I get in the conversation with someone I know I have my facts and I won’t sound foolish. This was an excellent adventure to be able to find out for yourself something so important like immigration that affects all of us every day.

This is where I discovered different ways of writing essays depending who you are writing for or what are you trying to accomplish. Each essay took some time and effort as well as a lot of revisions to make it a masterpiece. Along the way, I learned to take the audience into consideration when writing a paper and to always use a reliable source to back up your ideas and reasoning. I’ve learned that not every internet source or article is credible therefore it will make your work week and you won’t be taken seriously. 

            Each essay had its own purpose and required a different way of thinking. Every unit was to introduce us to a new way of thinking and give us new challenges to tackle. I gave us the opportunity to practice the methods and skills we will need to compose the final project. Formulating my thesis and supporting it with the reasons and ideas and interviewing someone with different views from mine were the first two essays. Making it to an argument paper without proving my point and then making a switch and arguing my points but without the ability to back it up with a research was the next part. The final step allowed me to find examples to use in my work to help my case. There was a different challenge associated with each one of the essays. It took a great way of thinking and time to make sense out of everything I wanted to write. One of the biggest challenges was to select the appropriate evidence out of the articles that make the biggest impact in my paper and get across to the readers.  

            Every time I worked on a draft we got together in groups and peer reviewed each other’s paper which was a tremendous help. I was able to get a great feedback from my classmates and make my paper even better. We did a lot of workshops to help each other solve any issues we had during writing. Group discussions during class have been extremely helpful over the course of this semester. We were also required to submit our drafts to Smarthinking which was a great way of seeing how someone that has no idea what I’m trying to write about sees my paper and use their critics and suggestions to put all my ideas together correctly to better my essay. All these ways of reviewing were excellent sources that have shaped my papers to what they are today. 

 I've learned so many new things about writing that I never gave a thought to. I've learned how to analyze my own work for weaknesses as well as defend what I was sure about. I have enjoyed sharing my work with my classmates as well as reading and helping others with their struggle. There were many interesting topics among my colleagues and it was great to see how their work developed over time. It was so rewarding seeing how with every essay we know more about the subject we chose and how much more personal it is becoming. I feel like with every credible evidence to back up our stance were becoming more confident and our paper was getting more convincing. 

 Looking back to the first lessons I see how everything we were doing from the very beginning, every project that was assigned to us was feeding on the previous one and fuelling the next one. I don't think I could get that far without all these steps. They taught me so much about my own writing and researching abilities and how much I need to improve to be a better writer. I've never read about one topic that I was going to write about as much as I did read on immigration. And knowing that I did not fully exhaust the topic I can say I'm proud of myself that I got to find out so many things I wasn't aware of. In the same time, I was able to enlighten others that were stuck in the same hole I was.  

            It was a pleasure to be working with my English professor. It was such a different experience from the ones I had before with teachers.  This was a great 10-week course and hopefully, my growth and progress as a writer will show in my future essays. I definitely feel like I can express my ideas far more effectively and with more confidence.