Throughout this semester, I saw that my writing and thinking skills have improved a lot more than I thought they would have. Over the months in this class, I have come to learn and understand things that I didn’t even know, for example, what a thesis is and how to MLA cite your sources.

I did not know what those things even meant or what they were used for, but now I understand.

In this class, I was able to explore other people’s opinions to better help me understand what we had to learn about it helped me see other people’s POVs on the matter at hand, and what I needed to understand in order to help prove my point. Getting feedback from my peers also helped me greatly because it helped me understand what I needed to improve on. It helped me know the context and discover more so that I would know how to write effectively. I showed this in my writing by using articles and news to help me connect my ideas to others so that I could appeal to my readers/audiences by creating an argumentative essay and analyzing it to connect more to my writing.

A writing piece of mine that I think shows all of the elements is my ‘Researched Critical Analysis Essay final daft.’ In this essay, I had to use articles and other things to help prove my thesis about the lack of feminism and sexual harassment in fairy tales. By using the 5 course learning outcomes, I was able to showcase this in my work.

First, I used “Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations.” I was able to use this in my writing by looking at people’s thoughts and feelings about this topic. So that I could connect my writing to the right source to prove that my argument was valid. We got a lot of help from the librarians in my school to help me find the right resources and materials in order for me to write these essays. They were really helpful in explaining to us how to research and find specific articles that connect to our topics.  An example from my writing is “Merritt also mentions in her article the case of a mother of a six-year-old who asked that Sleeping Beauty be removed from her child’s school because of its harmful message about kissing unconscious girls without their consent.” This connects to the argument because it shows how the mother of the kid felt about the topic.

My first drafts Example:

The second was “Develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing.” With this section, I was able to write a really bad first draft and a second draft of what I would like to be in the essay, which helped me plan out my thinking and where I would like the essay to lead. I also was able to receive feedback from my teacher on my writing, letting me know what I needed to improve on. And because of that, I was able to deeply understand the matter on which I needed to work on. For instance, in one of her comments, she stated, “I would like you to do more in your introduction to lead your reader into the subject matter and refine your thesis to take a clear stance. I like your topic of sexual harassment and gender dynamics, but I think you need to incorporate the idea of these themes being harmful to young readers.” This part of my essay, ‘The underlying themes of sexual harassment and feminism in fairy tales, often regarded as innocent stories, reveals the gender dynamics and societal norms that show harassment against women, as seen in Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. While fairy tales might seem innocent and harmless when you’re a child, as you grow older, you begin to recognize the underlying issues, such as non-consensual kisses and the lack of feminist values.’ And I changed it into this: ‘Have you ever wondered what messages lie beneath the dreamy surface of fairytales? Despite being perceived as innocent and harmless, fairytales contain deeper themes that reflect gender dynamics and societal norms like sexual harassment and the absence of feminist values. These problems are demonstrated by the non-consensual interactions, passive heroines, and damaging beauty standards in tales like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. As we become older, we start to recognize the hidden issues in these tales and how they promote outdated beliefs about women and their roles in society.” This proves how getting feedback from my teacher helped me figure out what I needed to improve on. It also opens my eyes to the many options and routes I could take to better improve my work

Next was “Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations.” I used this by mentioning how I felt about the situation and how it connected to the events of the current world. I feel like adding my opinion and my emotions to the story would better help me connect to what I was writing about also, because I know the feeling of being sexually touched without giving your consent. I wanted to reach out to other people who have been in a similar situation, and that helped me sympathize with the case that I wrote about in my essay. I also earlier on added a question where I wanted the readers to think about how they would feel, like if they were in this kind of situation. An example of that is: In the essay, I wrote, ‘And just like in the case of Brock Turner, it has become common to see news stories on television about people raping others in broad daylight. I remember seeing a news report on June 18, 2024, about a man who raped a 13-year-old girl in broad daylight. He was arrested, but what I kept on thinking about was what that little girl might have felt in that moment—she didn’t ask for it. Nobody ever does.’ This shows how I used a real-life event to connect to the case of sexual harassment in fairy tales. I feel like I could have made it a bit stronger by maybe adding in my own experience in the same situation as the little girl, but I kind of didn’t, and that was my mistake, but either way I feel like this part helped me get my point across about how everything is so messed up in the world nowadays and that little kids should not be going through or facing these problems at such a young age.

“Understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences.” I was able to use digital technology to find other critics who had different opinions and views on the topic. And by looking for that, I was also able to pinpoint other people who have similar situations or smaller feelings to the hidden message behind fairy tales and how it might be inappropriate to children. I feel like that will help people connect more if they were like in a similar situation, like that’s when they were a child where they thought that fairy tales were wonderful and amazing in a sense, but then when they read it over again, they realized that it was telling an inappropriate message. For example, in my essay I said, ‘She suggests that the portrayal of the female body as both desirable and motionless is a theme that reinforces overall ideas of male sexual power and female degradation. She explores how these mirror broader societal gender roles. In contrast to Tatar, “The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children’s Fairy Tales” by Lori Baker-Sperry and Liz Grauerholz examines how the feminine beauty ideal is deeply embedded in children’s fairy tales and the consequences of this common representation.’ This part shows how I connect Tatar’s idea of the way females were portrayed in fairy tales to what  Baker-Sperry & Grauerholz also said about how kids pick up these ideas from a young age. I felt like this was important because it will help parents, teachers, and other people to think about what they tell kids of this generation. This also really helped me a lot because I am not one for researching a lot, so having to look for other people’s opinions and views on the topic really helped me realize what I really wanted to write about. 

“Compose texts that integrate a stance with appropriate sources, using strategies such as summary, analysis, synthesis, and argumentation” was the last one, and with this one, I was able to use this in my essay by reading what other people thought about the topic and adding on to this. I used summary to explain the main points from these sources, analysis to analyze their importance, and summary to combine different viewpoints into one. For example, in my essay, I said, ‘Similarly, in Sleeping Beauty, Flowe refers to the version of Sun, Moon, and Talia by Giambattista Basile, written in the 17th century. In this version, a passing king repeatedly rapes Princess Talia while she sleeps. She only wakes up months later to find that she has given birth to his children. This story highlights the lack of consent from Sleeping Beauty, who is powerless in the situation. So I want to ask: How would you feel waking up after years of being unconscious just to find out that you are pregnant with a child because a man raped you? I know that if that were me, I would be outraged. And I know that some people might argue that the prince had to kiss her to wake her up, but even if that was true, she never asked. him to kiss her, and she most certainly did not consent to being raped while asleep.’ This demonstrates both the author’s point of view and my own on the matter. And I feel like it also helps you bring awareness to the situation at hand, because as a child we shouldn’t be thinking that we are okay with falling asleep and then having somebody kiss us without us knowing that they did so. I feel like this part really helped me connect a lot in my essay.

In conclusion, I think that my writing and reading skills and in the class overall have improved, but I feel like there is still more I could work on because sometimes I feel like I keep on repeating myself, just phrasing it in another way.