Category: English 100: Artifacts

I started this module with relative confidence in where I was planning my anthology to go and how I would go about executing my work. However, that plan was quickly thwarted during the researching phase of the paper, when I discovered that there wasn’t enough academic research on my particular topic (Empowering young black girls through modern children’s literature). Therefore, I decided to broaden my topic to find more results that would add to my topic rather than diverting it away in another direction. I decided then to change my topic to include adolescents and teens (new topic: Empowering young black girls through age appropriate literature). This alteration actually strengthened my paper as it included an essential group that would have been left out otherwise. After I found articles that suited the new stretch in my topic, I regained my confidence in the writing process and proceeded to plan and write my anthology introduction. Speed isn’t my strength when it comes to writing but as I’ve found time and time again, I can write in an amazing abundance. I’ve said it before, and I will probably be saying it again as I continue to improve my writing skills: I need to work on being a more concise writer. After the flow of writing, my main struggle was learning how to properly cite in APA. I am far more comfortable working with MLA, which was my reasoning for the torture of learning APA. I can’t say that I could confidently use it without looking at a guide but I have learned basics and well, that’s something, isn’t it?

The first lesson I learned from writing this anthology project is that researching is not as easy as it sounds. My chosen topic was empowering young black girls through literature, and as I hunted for related articles, I was overwhelmed by how many results I found that skirted the edge of my topic but didn’t completely fit . The few that I did manage to find, after narrowing down my search to very specific results, were mostly written by the same two people. I realized that while there was a lot of research surrounding fighting systematic racism, and empowering black children, there wasn’t as much of a focus on black girls. Instead of being discouraged by the results, I was more determined to learn about what these young girls face and how through the power of literature they can be inspired to reach their full potential.

The second lesson I learned was that I tend to overwrite rather than making my words count. I learned this as I took the instructions to write my proposal in the form of a list as a suggestion and not the criteria. As a reader, and someone who enjoys writing, my first response is to write like a storyteller rather than an academic. It will be a learning curve for me but as I’ve learned in class, “revision is one of the most important stages of the writing process”(Graff 139).

In module three, I learned how to properly analyse and deconstruct texts so that I can view them from different academic standpoints. From there I was taught how to build my argument in order to support, disagree or slightly differ from the original writer’s thesis to back my own. Before this class I wouldn’t have been able to distinguish between MLA and APA but now I understand the basic differences and know where to find answers I don’t know. I used these new skills to build my argument for my critical analysis on Raja Shehadeh’s essay, Mother’s House. Knowing how to write a critical analysis effectively certainly will be beneficial to understanding how to construct university work in the future but it’s the ability to critically think that will be the most valuable to me in my Liberal Studies program. One of the most prevalent aspects to my degree is the capability to view situations from multiple perspectives. The skills I’ve gained though this module to review and evaluate texts with a critical mind can further be used to examine a problem or notion in order to reflect on the many facets each one could potentially enclose and consider them in an unbiased manner. These new skills and attitudes can only be an asset to my university career as I continue to learn and grow as a writer.