Process Journal 5

I am excited about this essay much more than any of my other essay's. I enjoyed all of the writings that we went over of Maxine Kingston's about Fa Mulan and the movie of Mulan, I didn't get much help from the Fa Mulan poem, but I did enjoy the topic of the fairy tales. I was pretty excited about the fairy tale topic in class last week and I have to be honest when I got home and started this essay I had a mind freeze and it was like I hit a brick wall! I thought I was going to be in trouble! After sitting down and stepping away from it and making notes about it, I finally sat down and put it all together and felt really good about it...thank the Lord! I did feel like I knew a lot about fairy tales and I also brought in another source that was not given to us along with the three others that were necessary in our essay.
As far as the thesis goes, I knew what I wanted to write about but sometimes I have a hard time getting those thoughts down on paper, so I had to tweak it a few times before coming to a conclusion. I felt pretty good about the sources that we had for this essay, once again I didn't get much from the poem though. As far as learning from the shadow essay.....I have to be honest, I did not like the shadow essay at all! It was very difficult for me for some reason and I think like I said in class, after being in nursing for awhile my mind just doesn't seem to think that deep into the analytical side of it, I felt like it was too psycho analytical.
I think that going over the sources together more than we did with the shadow helped a lot more. It seemed as though the shadow essay we flew through the sources and didn't get a good understanding of them....I still don't think I understand it even after writing my rough draft and final paper. :) As far as doing anything differently I would have maybe added a couple other sources maybe to support the fairy tale idea further and not just use Mulan. The sources were great for some of the other essay topics we could write about, but if you chose fairy tales like I did, it was kind of hard to talk about fairy tales and only be able to use one as a source.
My strengths and weaknesses. I have learned that my strengths are still the basics, the fundamentals of writing, I think I am a good writer, but sometimes I have a hard time getting my thoughts down without them being all over, even when I sit down and do an outline with my thesis and my points to support etc... but I am working on that and hope to get better with time. As far as improving, I can always improve and that is what I plan on doing. I need to work specifically on organizing my thoughts and making my essay run smoother which I hope that with this last essay we just wrote I will have very much improved.

Process Journal 4

The shadow concept to me was very interesting. As far as using it for an essay topic it made me very confused while writing it. I did enjoy reading about it and learning about the shadow concept I just found it difficult to write about and make it understandable. I felt as if the concept was explained well, but it was one of those topics that you really had to think about and try to completely understand yourself before being able to put it on paper. It was almost like writing a psych paper. I am not happy with my essay that I wrote, and I think it would have been much better if I would have had time to organize my thoughts, and make my thoughts more clear before writing the essay.
The time constraint was not beneficial to me at all! I think the topic was maybe too deep of a topic for a one hour time frame. I am very glad that we get to revise this essay because my essay will be a completely different essay by the time I am done with it. I definitely know that I have to revise my writings before handing them in, and this is something I do many times before handing it in.
I did read all of my sources before the class, and wrote out my thoughts and made notes on my papers, I think it was hard because I didn't know what the question was so it was hard for me to write out my thoughts after reading the questions and then trying to organize it so it didn't all run together, but that didn't happen because of the time allowed. I will be making more notes, and will have my understand my own thoughts before writing my next paper.
Like I said I enjoyed this topic because I find it very interesting, I just had a hard time with the time allowed and putting my thoughts on paper without it all sounding all run together.
I am hoping to keep improving on my writing and being a bit quicker with my responses so that I am more prepared next time we have a timed essay that is due.