The Textual Analysis was an interesting paper. It was the second of three important papers during the semester and in some ways the beginning of the next one. I needed to make sure this paper was good so that it wouldn’t come back to bite me when I was writing the argumentative paper.

There was an interesting and difficult new aspect to writing this paper, and that was researching. I know researching isn’t necessarily difficult, but finding the right source to back all your claims, or in my case, prove me right through contradiction isn’t as easy. As difficult as that was however, that wasn’t even the first step. I needed to find an issue and community I wanted to categorize myself in first.

Finding a community and issue that concerned that community is something that had me stuck for a while. It had me stuck to the point where I felt like I was slacking when it came to writing my paper. I was really indecisive and didn’t know what to choose. I asked classmates for what they did and it didn’t really help me. Some where using their ethnic background which I thought was the simple way out, and others were doing things that I knew weren’t for me. It didn’t interest me enough to write about it or it just didn’t sit well with me. It took me a while, but it finally hit me to talk about the specialized high school I graduated from. Specifically, the admissions process to them.

Drafting was something that came easy to me throughout the course after I discovered a technique that really fit my style. It didn’t go as quick this time though because I had to incorporate the research into the writing, so there was definitely more thinking involved, but it still worked well for me.

After learning from the first paper I had to write, I received a much better grade on my first draft and it was around this point in the course where I was gaining confidence in my writing. I really liked the feedback I was getting from my professor and I would always take it into consideration because I knew that was the best way to improve my writing.

One thing that definitely helped me develop a good paper was that I ended up choosing the best community and issue for me. The issue concerned me and I was a part of the community for a while so I felt like I had the ability to speak on the topic. I knew what was going on, the arguments on both sides and what they had to say. That really allowed me to pick apart everything that my opposition had to say which is exactly what I did in the paper to.