Course Reflection

As I look back on my progress as a writer, it is safe to say that my skills have definitely improved. I have never had to write so many long papers is so little time in high school before, and this has helped me learn to read into texts deeper in order to have a deeper understanding so I could have more things to talk about in my essays.  This improved my ability to analyze and read between the lines, and find connections between sources are aren't obvious at a surface level. I learned how to analyze the dialogue between sources rather than just writing about surface-level similarities and differences between them. Not only, that, the nature of having so many essays to do has helped me to improve my time management skills, which is arguably the most important skill a person should have/ In high school, we learned many aspects of how to write a thesis, such as framing a complex argument and stating your position, but I have never considered the "so what?" aspect of writing an essay until this class. I realized, that when I write a paper, that it shouldn't be just an experiment in analyzing paper to see if authors agree or disagree on a subject, or just reporting facts, but the paper should be grounded in reality and have some sort of impact on the outside world. If anything, asking myself "so what?" after every paragraph I write will be my biggest take away from Exposition and Argument. Because if a paragraph doesn't answer "so what?", the paragraph is pointless, and if a thesis doesn't answer "so what?", there is no point in reading that paper. Overall, my experience in this course has been an extremely constructive one.