Catalina Ramirez

Timothy K. Dalton

Narrative Medicine 10113

December 10, 2023

Self-Assessment Essay

Through the semester my writing greatly improved in various aspects. I was originally very stuck on my writing pattern that I adopted in high school. Whenever I wrote essays for high school they were carefully selected from premade templates that I had perfected in my high school years and I dreaded writing most of them since we were rarely ever given any creative prompts. Since I began this course my writing evolved into creating writing that had a specific purpose and target audience, developing a line of reasoning with proper sources that supported my arguments, and taking fuller advantage of editing resources in the writing process. I would say the majority of my improvement this semester could be categorized under 2 different CLOs, the first being “Engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes” and the second being “Compose texts that integrate your stance with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation.”

The first CLO I was able to greatly improve on was concerning the collaborative aspects of the writing process. When writing my outsider narrative I focused heavily on my own personal opinion and the writing techniques I was accustomed to from high school even though the assignment brought on more of a creative and personal aspect to the writing piece. I brought what I believed to be a finished piece of writing to the peer-editing session as I was afraid of showing people my raw work and having their honest feedback. Throughout the class I was taken aback by how different my essay was compared to the rest of my peers and instead of looking to them for help, I went to Professor Dalton instead of how to fix my essay, and concluded that the majority of my essay needed to be rewritten. This approach to the writing process was very different from how I attacked the Critical Lens essay. For that essay I was more comfortable in sharing non-edited work and the peer conferences provided deeper insight into how to improve my essay. As seen in Figures 3, 4, and 5, Kate Tuchman’s comments allowed me to see the weakness and strengths in my essay. From the peer conferences, all 3 comments in that section of my paper were later developed and I finally appreciated the beauty in allowing others to see your unfinished and raw work in order to have more open conversation about your writing and be able to ask specific questions. 

The second CLO that I was able to improve on this semester was in reference to integrating my stance with appropriate use of sources and strategies. At the start of the semester as I mentioned beforehand, I was struggling with the way my outsider narrative was written. As seen in Figure 1 and 2 that display the intro and the last sentence of my original draft, it can be easily determined how heavily philosophical my essay was. Metaphors dominated my essay and instead of using points that develop a narrative and have the present current actions of the narrator within the story to create a live scene that the reader could participate in, I was carried away with the aesthetics of my wording. It was to the point where my writing did not have any concrete narrative and I was telling past occurrences rather than bringing to life scenes that spoke to the circumstances of the narrator in the story. This writing block improved more when it came to my Metaphor essay, as seen in Figure 6 which shows analysis of the second quote in the paper from the song “Happiness is a butterfly” by Lana Del Rey and the beginning portion of my connection it had to healthcare. I was able to properly implement the use of metaphors from the start of my writing rather than have the metaphors overpower my essay, the analysis that was derived from those metaphors drove my writing to give the reader a clearer view of my argument. The process of going from my draft to my final version of my metaphor essay demonstrated my journey in becoming accustomed to the use of proper literary strategies when appropriate. I was able to dissect them and have proper knowledge of how these metaphors worked and could be applied to medicine/healthcare as a whole. Moreover, my use of sources and ability to analyze quotes was further enhanced in my research paper. Figures 7 and 8 show proper implementation of quote and consequent analysis and use of a creative source (the video poem) in the paper. My research paper was better structured than my previous writing and did not use metaphors in them but did use syntactical maneuvers that enhanced the writing and comprehension of the paper. The structure and format of the paper improved when using a combination of quotes, analysis, and even creative sources that I became more comfortable and confident in implementing into my writing. 

In reflection, this semester has been a transformative journey for my writing skills not only inside the classroom, but also outside the classroom as I have learned to love writing as a whole more and I incorporate daily journaling into my day in great thanks to Professor Dalton and the free writes we began since the beginning of the semester. As I look forward to future semesters I am committed to building upon these achievements, continually refining my writing skills, assisting others in the writing process, and creating a community where everyone can learn and grow.