Reflective Essay
I took this English 1213 course my second semester of my Junior year or High School, and I learned a lot, not only about how to get better at writing college level essays, but also about the effects of screen addiction and absurdist writing. Before this school year, I did not really know how to write good essays; most of them were really hard to read since they had no apparent continuity. Now, after taking this course I learned how to write so that my essays have better continuity and transition in a smoother manner from paragraph to paragraph.
In our first project, I wrote an argumentative essay about how the screen addiction epidemic in teenagers can be solved. I learned a lot about all the downsides of excessive use of screens, which will lead me to take better care of my own screen time. Extended screen time can lead to many health issues like depression, anxiety, bad posture, etc. I also learned that a better way of looking for primary sources is by going into the TCC Library and checking the databases for better sources. With the databases’ sources, I used articles that were research based, and gave me better proof for my essay. My argument was that teenagers can do sports or have hobbies to take their time away from their screens, and that parents can help them through the process by setting screen time restrictions to themselves too.
However, this was my point of view of the epidemic. In our second project, I had to think about what one of the absurdist writers that learned about in class would solve the problem. I chose Franz Kafka since his story seemed interesting, and I felt like he would give a point of view that would stand out a lot. After researching, I learned that Kafka had a really hard childhood since his father abused him physically and verbally his entire childhood. This led to him having anxiety his entire life, and most of his writings allude to his toxic father-son relationship. Therefore, it was hard for me to think like him since I have not lived anything like that. At first, the argument seemed to have my own ways to solve screen addiction, but my point of view was nowhere close to Kafka’s. My English tutor was the one that brought up my errors during workshopping. Kafka thought about the absurdities of life and he would write to solve the problem, so when those writings are published, the problem comes to the light, and people can take action.
These argumentative essays helped me understand others’ situations and points of view better. At first I thought that Kafka would have a similar point of view as mine, but he came from a different culture, different time, and he had a different childhood. At the end, I managed to understand what he would do better, and the essay felt much smoother after some changes. I was also struggling to find better sources before this course, but now I know how to find better sources that are research based and not argument based. Additionally, I learned how much workshopping can impact my grades. In Composition 1, I would normally get a B in all of my essays, and I never did any workshopping. On the other hand, in this Composition 2 course I did workshopping with an English tutor, and she really helped me find errors in my writing, so I have been getting high A’s in all my essays now.