Mahnoor Saqib

Professor Von Uhl

FQWIS 10108

16 December 2019

Growth through Struggle

I struggled throughout the semester, I do not like to write, but it was all about writing. Since I was very concern about my grade, I tried my best and put my effort to get a good grade. My main audiences were Professor Alyssa and Professor Von Uhl. FIQWS class helped me a lot in becoming a better writer, I learned new things throughout my semester. When I had to write the first essay, “Literacy Narrative”, based on the image of Charcot, A Clinical Lesson at the Salpetriere. We had to explain our emotions towards the image and then connect to any other moment but gender and hysteria were the main focus. I thought through the image the painter is trying to show the role of a woman with hysteria in 1887 when this image was painted. So I decided to make a connection of the image to the role of woman in that period when the image was created. I explained how women did not have enough rights in society. Then I made a connection “The Yellow Wallpaper”, in which how the woman was not allowed to do anything that she wants, but she had to listen to her husband. I wanted my essay to be perfect, so I went to the writing center for help and my tutor helped me proofread the essay. We also had some peer review in our class in which peers helped each other by telling them where they need to focus more. But I think it could have better if I worked on it more, I did not put my effort into this essay as compared to other ones. Then, we had to write the reflection on the essay that if we struggled so we overcame it. After the “Literacy Narrative”, we started working on our next essay which was the “Exploratory Essay”. For this essay, our Professors gave us four short stories and we had to choose one from them and then write the essay on it. I chose “The Black Cat”, written by Edgar Allan Poe. It was about an alcoholic man who killed his favorite cat and then his wife. I did not know what would I write in my thesis, I went to Professor Alyssa many times and stayed in her office until late at night. Even though I had a thesis statement but it was not strong so one day when I went to Professor Alyssa’s office there were some other students too and everyone shared their thesis statement. When shared mine, Professor Alyssa and other students helped me and told me that where I need to make changes. Then, I finally came up with a thesis, I wrote the essay and we had a lot of peer reviews in class also online. For the online peer view, we had to send my essay to the other person via blackboard and another person had to send it to me. Then we had to review it and look for mistakes and then sent them their essay back. This also helped me because Professor Von Uhl gave us a rubric for the peer review, we had to look for the thesis statement, topic sentences, and transitions. My thesis was how the unnamed narrator displaces his anger from his repressed memory of being teased on to the cat, which leads the narrator to become an alcoholic and kill his cat and wife. I analyze the text based on my argument and used Freud to support it. For this essay citation was the most important thing, we were using Freud’s “five lectures on psychoanalysis” which had the page number, however the story “The Black Cat” did not. We can not write the information from the lectures or the story without citing, otherwise, it would be considered plagiarism. The professor said that we can not simply summarize the text but we have to explain it. When I showed her my draft, Professor Alyssa said that I put too much summary. I did not know how to explain it in my own words. One day in the content section, Alyssa made us write our thesis statement on the color paper and then told us to thick it on the board. She said everyone had to write at least comments on two different thesis statements. One of the comments that I received was “I should go in deep in connecting to Freud’s concepts”. The due date was coming closer and I was not finished with my essay, so both professors gave us an extra day to finish it. This essay gave me an idea of analyzing the text and then related it to others, for us it was Freud. Grammar is the main issue for me because I get confused about where to put the comma and other punctuation. Right after the exploratory essay, we started to work on critical research analysis. We had to choose the prompt and the story and then write an abstract on it. Before writing the essay, Alyssa had to approve our topic. I chose Prompt three, which was focusing on the critic of society and I chose The Bluest Eye. In the Critical Research Analysis, we had to use two outside sources I found the sources on the CCNY website, one of my source were about child abuse and the other one was the father-daughter relationship. We had two of the workshops, in which we learn how and where we can find the sources. It made it easy for me because I did not have to stress about it too. I was already struggling with writing the essay and was so confused about where to start and how to put in the outside sources, that I chose. I also went to the writing center and that where I started brainstorming and I begin writing my essay. I wrote about how Cholly was not raised by his parents and that affected him as a father in the future. when he had his children, he did not hoe to love them because he never experiences the love from his father. We got three extra days to finish our essay. I spend three days before it was due, in the essay. Throughout this class, I was able to learn what is MLA format, how to cite sources, punctuation, and writing skills.