12 october 2022

Journal 11: Post Essay Reflection (Exploratory essay)

My essay is about Cinderella and how she is pure of heart. How the authors talk about Cinderella and show that with her being nice all her life and not having evil in her heart, she would succeed in life. Throughout the tale, she is helped by her godmother, pigeons, magic trees, or other gifts in different versions of the story. This reason was because she had a nice heart that was shown in many versions, having to be bossed around by her step family. My purpose was to write an essay about how having a good heart will get you good stuff as shown in Cinderella’s life. While on the other hand, if you have wicked thoughts, terrible things will go your way, as shown to the evil stepsisters and stepmother not having the life they wished for. The intended audience could be for the kids, so they could understand the fact that having a pure heart will get you a happy life. That when you grow up and you are successful is because you stood to your heart, that others can’t achieve. One of the course learning outcomes that I picked up on was developing strategies for reading, drafting, revising, and editing. This helped me expand my writing in ways that I never knew before. For instance, I usually don’t go for editing my essay, for the main reason that I think it’s alright and that I would get a good grade on it. This helped me think outside the box and choose careful evidence that I could use for my essay. Another tool I used was to locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias. The amount of articles I had to find and make this essay work. To be honest though, I still need more work on this because as you told me professor, I have to redo my essay. So I have to find articles or magazines that have the opinions of what Cinderella is about, and not have stories for my essay. This essay has taught me that I still have work to be done, in order for me to have a solid essay in the future. In my exploratory essay, it was difficult for me because it was our first time using the ccny library and it came out of nowhere. I didn’t know I was gonna have to redo my essay and that annoyed and stressed me because I should’ve had gotten it right the first time, yet I’m here and still needing to do it with the stress from my other essays to be done. Lastly, even though I have to redo my essay, I did think it was nice to read and then write about the different ideas that different authors had on the idea of cinderella and how she was given things while having a “pure heart,” even though she only did chores and was taken the life that she had in the first place.

11 November 2022

Journal 15: Post Essay Reflection (RCA)

With the research critical analysis essay, the genre is about fairytales and the deeper meaning that is used from them. The purpose of this essay is to understand why Cinderella didn’t have a good happy life and it was all because of her having a stepmother. The research was to find out why stepparents can not work compared to biological parents. Stepparents have higher chances to cause depression, sadness, 180 personality turns and much more to their stepchild. Cinderella, who lost her actual mother at a young age, had to be bossed around due to having a stepmother who didn’t care about her, except for her actual children. That is also why stepparents don’t always work out, because when they have a biological child, their child will be a bigger priority compared to a stepchild. The audience is people in general that stepfamilies can be a difficult task to solve because the trust that would take for the child to trust the new parent would be difficult. One tool that I used that helped into building the essay was to develop strategies for reading, drafting, revising, and editing. I read the different articles about how stepparents can affect your life compared to Cinderella, drafting ideas that helped my essay get better, and revising my essay because of the MLA format. I think I did better than my exploratory essay because I didn’t have to redo this essay. This essay had me use many sources that I could find and explain why stepparents have harder jobs compared to biological parents. Locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias. The articles that I retrieved were to further analyze the essay. I feel like writing this essay was better because it was a subject that I knew how to write about and the fact that I already had experience writing research critical analysis with better format. I knew how to use the MLA format better, I took the time I had to make it count and used the CCNY library better to my knowledge. I took the feedback into consideration and used it to make my essay better. I feel like this was easier because this essay allowed me to write my opinion and why I think stepparents are not as good compared to real parents. I feel that this is the best work I’ve done compared to all the other essays I’ve done. Composing texts that integrate the student’s stance and language with appropriate sources, using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation was another tool I used because of arguing why stepparents are difficult to live with. Summarizing what the symptoms of being a stepchild are. All in all, there’s probably something I could’ve done better, but I’m proud of myself for the grade I got and that it gave me a solid grade overall.