The Process and Emotion of Writing the First Paper for Writing 100 Course

Writing the first paper for this class was daunting.  I felt overwhelmed knowing that I had a lot of preparation to do to ensure I was capturing the information required.  Though I have written papers in

my college career before I felt that this one was more important being the first one in an actual writing class.  After reading and understanding the assignment prompt I felt uneasy, unsure of my direction.  I had feelings like one does when it is your first day at a new job or your first day at a new school.  It was feelings of uncertainty, indecision, insecurity, and questioning.  However, I had to do this, and put my mind to it and my best effort in.  I had to those self-doubting thoughts around and think positive.  The motivation that drove me during the process was the emotion I felt from the articles we read and the prompt of the assignment.  I have passion for women’s rights and for food.  I felt hard to get that passion into articulated words and a supported argument that a reader will be drawn into.

The first step I took in preparing to write this essay was to read the articles related to the assignment over again.  I wanted to be sure I had a thorough understanding of each of them.  I felt that the assignment prompt led me to the “Having It His Way” easily.  After reading the articles again I chose to focus on a commercial described and analyzed within “Having It His Way”.  The next step I took was to view the video that I chose, “BK Manthem”, on YouTube.  After viewing the video, re-reading the articles and thinking about the prompt some of my irrational thoughts started to be replaced with drive to write my feelings and get my argument on paper.

During the first few steps of this process I continued to feel overwhelmed.  I was trying to think of ways to possibly incorporate all of the articles we read into my essay.  This made me feel anxious, I felt like a sponge trying to absorb too much water, like the water my thoughts were all of the place.  This feeling of being overcome led me to decide that I was overthinking.  I could not use all three articles in full, but could possibly add parts of what I learned from them to help in my essay’s arguments.

I began jot down simple words and phrases describing the video.  I wrote down a few quotes from the video that stood out to me as related to our assignment.  I choose and then described parts of the video that made me feel angry, sad, even some parts that made me laugh.  I then found links between my thoughts about the video and the analysis in the article “Having It His Way” and wrote those down.  From here I began to form my arguments and found support of them in the article, and started to write my essay.

I also felt nervous about the peer review process.  I feel uncomfortable with the idea of providing someone else feedback.  What if I offend someone with my thoughts on their essay?  (Because I know I can be opinionated…and how to appropriately phrase my thoughts?)  I was thinking that I don’t even really know my classmates, and they don’t me so this could be difficult.  How do I phrase my responses to their writing when I’m not sure of their personality, their response to my feedback, their writing style?  I also felt nervous about the prospect of receiving feedback from peers.  I only experienced peer reviews in one other class.  In that instance the peers that reviewed my work really didn’t give constructive or what I felt to be useful feedback.  It was just a few kind words, or grammar/spelling corrections. 

I must say after experiencing this type of peer review process where the professor is requiring a certain type of response in our feedback, I feel much more at ease with the process.  I feel that since we all knew what was to be expected in our feedback to others, and what we were to receive in our feedback it made the process easier and more comfortable.  I appreciated this type of review process and the feedback received.

Overall, from start to finish I feel that this assignment and most likely the class in general is going to make me stronger as a writer, reader, student and classmate.  The amount of time, effort, and emotion that the class will take will add to my qualifications in taking on any type of writing assignment from a simple email, essay or research paper.  I will feel very accomplished when I complete not only this assignment, but this course.