A New Door Opened to Writing/Reading
Starting my freshman year at Washington College as a biology major and a dance minor, writing courses were never my specialty. I just saw them as courses that I had to complete in order to move to the next grade level, never really taking them seriously or with much thought. Stepping into Professor Meehan’s English 101 took a toll on me and changed my perspective when it came to writing and reading. In the very first week of his course he asked us “How in the past have we learned the structure of an essay?” I never thought about my own personal writing style, I only wrote down what came to mine. Then he asked us to complete a “To-Do” list, which was a list of things that we needed to improve on in this course when it came to writing.
I never thought of improving my writing because I just thought it was just thoughts that literally came out of your head to a paper or a computer. On my list I wrote some things such as analysis, thesis statements, quotes, as the things that I felt I needed to work on with my writing. This course started off with us having to complete an autobiography about basically what is significant reading and writing to us and what experiences have shaped that significance. This piece that I had to write opened my eyes to love of writing papers. This professor took his time with me and help me understand my style of writing and that contributed to this love that I felt for writing as of right now. As this course went on, more papers were written and my grades got higher, higher than I could ever imagine. By the end of this course everything that I needed to work on from my “To-Do” list was improved because I finally understood the purpose of writing that I never understood through my whole high school career.
Now that English 101 is over and I am stepping into a higher course of English I am ready to challenge myself here at Washington College with my new set of writing skills and my new “To-Do” list. This particular piece in this portfolio was one of my best works as a writer in English 101. I chose to revise it to add more depth to this essay. This essay is a demonstration of how my ability to construct anaylysis, make a clear thesis statement, and intergrate quotes has improved from my “To-Do” list. For example, here is a thesis statement that took me 1 week to perfect. In “Saw II” the second movie of this series, Jigsaw’s traps are actually a representation of him doing an internal killing of a monster inside of his victims as Victor created a monster physically. Jigsaw’s recreation of his victims in “Saw II,” in my view, is a hidden “Frankenstein” plot. This is represented by him “internally” re-creating his victims based on their immoral flaws. Over this week with the help of my professor, it took me a lot of revisions to make this thesis statement more concise and straight to the point. During this process I had to take out words or phrases that did not help my reader understand the point of my essay. This paper is called “A Theory of Re-Creation within Thyself,” which is a comparison of how the movie Saw II is really an undercover Frankenstein remake from the past. Enjoy!
