My name is Adam Chouman and I am currently a freshman at City College Of New York. There were many challenges I faced in this course due to completing all my work from home, however, I persevered to get all of the coursework and essays done regardless of the difficulties. I live in a very small studio apartment with 4 other family members and I find it hard to concentrate on virtual learning due to limited space and too much noise. However, this course presented me with constant writing processes that were needed in order to effectively write assignments and essays. That helped me overcome my distractions and focus directly on my writing strengths and weaknesses.

Throughout this course, I had a lot of enjoyment in the writing process through many different genres of essays and assignments. I learned a lot during this course and I was able to track the increase in my writing progress as the essay level increased and became more difficult. When I wrote essays in high school I would always explain and analyze quotes in a simple way. However, this course shed light on how to analyze texts in a meaningful and thorough way in order to get the points straight across and while not misleading the audience of any essay. In the beginning of the course, I had a hard time analyzing texts correctly. But as we were presented with texts, and made outlines/ drafts I was able to practice the ways of perfect analysis. This analysis would be helpful in terms of my business/ management major because you always need to analyze the workplace for a variety of reasons. In this course, I needed to pick two topics in which I would focus on throughout the rest of the semester. I chose to analyze and explain the connection between language and nursing communication throughout various assignments such as the Exploratory essay, Exigence essay, Multimodal presentation, and the RCA ( researched critical analysis).

The introduction essay was a very important essay for me because it was a way to introduce the professors to myself and my writing style for formal letters. I was never good at writing formal letters of introductions because in high school it was never emphasized. Therefore, after exploring through many different formal letter templates I was able to understand all of the necessary components of a letter such as a title, address, phone, indentation, proper grammar, etc. This personal introduction essay allowed me to explore more of myself in terms of what I normally love to do academic wise. After this letter of introduction, I was able to write professional emails to internship industries, other job applications, and even to other professors. This is a necessary component needed throughout anybody’s life and this course made me feel comfortable in writing future letters.

In this class, one essay that was required was an Exploratory essay. I found that the structure and components of this essay is very different than a normal research paper. When I first started writing this paper I developed one distinct connection/ thesis statement between the two topics of language and nursing communication. As a result, my thesis statement was very opinionated and one-sided. This went against the main assignment of the exploratory essay which is writing an informative essay about a topic while interpreting multiple sides/ points of view but not explaining the connection in terms of our opinion. The reason I made this mistake in my thesis statement is that I did not have enough significant research that would lift up my paper. Therefore, one of the key takeaways I learned from this essay is to focus on the research/ evidence portion of the essay before developing a full draft/ essay. When having good research I was able to create a clear and concise thesis statement which was very helpful in analyzing and forming connections throughout the essay. After learning this new type of writing style for the first time in my educational career, I believe that I gained the skill of exploring topics and explaining them to a particular audience. This essay has an informative approach to the rhetorical situation. Through the draft process of this essay, I learned that all sub-arguments must correlate with the idea presented within the thesis statement, or else it would be confusing.

In terms of the Exigence essay, it felt much easier compared to the Exploratory essay because I was given the freedom to explain my own opinion and connection to the topics of language/ nurse communication. With my opinion, I believe that I was able to bring out the importance of language in the nursing field and why it should be more emphasized within the health care system in order to create an overall healthier society. This essay is a type of informative- narrative essay that required me to explain the significance of the topic in terms of my personal life while also trying to make a claim for myself. One issue that I was struggling with within this essay was not having a bias in my statements because sometimes I still did not recognize all of the points of view or different sides to my personal connection or argument. When I first wrote this essay, my exigence was very confusing and the storyline was misleading to the audience because it had multiple focus points. However, after taking a successful third attempt at this essay I was able to create a thesis statement with one focus which allowed for consistency in my essay. Overall, it is important to be specific in the exigence essay and to also not go off track with ideas relating to the connection to a topic.

The Multimodal presentation, allowed me to present the information about my topic and explain it in a different media of presentation. For this assignment, I just used the simple word PowerPoint because I was limited to a voice recording due to loud background noise. Therefore, in this presentation, I displayed and explained my topic in a more concise way while showing images and graphs that would enhance the reader’s understanding of the topic. However, there was one important key factor that prevented me from getting a high grade on this assignment. I did not explain the thesis statement effectively as I would in a research paper. Therefore, I got so distracted by the creativity in the multimodal presentation that I did not go deeper into the analysis within my topic in the presentation. Ultimately, translating something into a different form of media also means having consistency with the thesis statement and general facts involved in a topic.

One of the last essays in this course was the Research Critical Analysis essay because it required most of the components that all of the previous essays required but it just required more analysis in terms of the thesis statement and body paragraphs. At first I had a lot of difficulty with my analysis in this assignment because I believed that I had a lot of repetition when explaining that nurses communicate language specifically for the health literacy of the patients. When drafting out my essay for the first time, I had evidence that was very straightforward and bias. That bias created strong inconsistency within my analysis and the connection to the thesis statements. Therefore, I went back to research for more trustworthy and credible sources from the CCNY database in order to remove bias and explain multiple sides to an argument. From this assignment, I learned that sources need to be thoroughly read and analyzed before including them inside an essay. To add on, I believe I grew as a writer by understanding how to write a thesis statement that clearly identifies the focus in the essay. Although this essay took a lot of time I do not regret doing it because it gave me a lot of insight into how true college essays feel and look like.

Overall. this course made me an extreme writer and now I understand how to properly write outlines, drafts, and good final papers. One of the biggest ideas I learned in this FIQWS class is to never give up even if you are struggling. One must stay invested in the writing process in order to have a strong essay. If all of the work leading up to the essay is done, it could give huge progress in terms of the accomplishment with an essay. This is because all of the drafting and outlining helped carry me into all of my final work. Some advice I have for all upcoming freshman is to stay investing in writing essays and to constantly prepare because leaving assignments for the last minute would always lead to inconsistent/inaccurate work. It is important to stay focused on the peer review process because I learned a lot from reading other essays and giving peers feedback. Having collaborative discussions will lead to positive growth and thinking. Also, I found self-reflection essays very fun to write because I like analyzing my writing decisions and seeing what I did incorrectly/ correctly in an essay. There will be many difficulties when writing essays but the mindset is what rules the quality of the essay.