Rachel Tapia

May 08,2025

ENGL 11102

Reema Rao

Self-Assessment Essay

Self-Assessment Essay

 Coming into writing for social sciences class, I didn’t expect to be so vigorously beaten and battered by the expectations of being a professional social scientist. As someone whose dream is to become a psychiatrist, this class is undoubtedly important for my training in the field of human research. As the days went on in this class, I realized how important formulating a stance, adequately using sources, and strategies for revising were in becoming an exemplary social scientist. Throughout the many weeks I worked in this class, I have had to proofread my essays and think of ways to improve my writing. Some of my biggest obstacles in getting a better grade have been my lack of reflection in my concluding paragraphs, lack of rhetorical analysis, as well as small mistakes in my use of citations. In this essay, I will show some of the progress I have made in these two areas, as well as other obstacles I have overcome.

In my first essay, the Feature Profile essay, I interviewed one of my classmates who was similar to me in that we are both of Latino background. The criteria to form this essay were to use direct quotes from the interviewee and analyze the quotes in a way that explained their viewpoint without imposing your own bias. Originally, I thought of how we were both first-generation Americans and how he could have been affected by American ideology, then as I kept writing, I realized he had his own mindset. Throughout my essay, I adequately used his quotes to explain my understanding of his values. My shortcoming was demonstrated in my concluding paragraph as well as some of the concluding statements in my body paragraphs. Instead of expanding on the information my interviewee relayed to me, I wrote about my own perspective and view of the topic I wanted to talk about. To fix this mistake, I deleted those intervening statements and rewrote a grander analysis of my interviewee’s statements. 

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As you can see, instead of writing about my own perception of American values I wrote about how my interviewees values differ from the values of the society he was born into. This revision to my previous work taught me that formulating a stance for any kind of essay requires a conscious effort not to bring your personal biases and ideas, and instead to accurately depict the information you must work with to form a reliable conclusion. 

My second essay, being the Field observation of an online community, I wrote about the Reddit Webtoon subculture. The criteria to write this essay were to pick a specific online community and use direct quotes from members of this community to understand patterns of behavior and shared beliefs. While most of my essay was perfect, my most noticeable drawbacks were my incorrect format of in-text citations and, once again, my lack of reflection in my concluding paragraph. My in-text citations were either not in APA 7th edition  format or had a hyperlink attached to them, which significantly lowered my grade. Secondly, my concluding paragraph didn’t reflect enough on the future implications of the Webtoon ecosystem. To revise my essay first, I changed all the in-text citations to be without hyperlinks and in APA format.

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Afterwards I wrote more about the future implications of the reader to creator transaction in my concluding paragraph.

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This concluding paragraph allowed me to express my concerns about the Webtoon community and the path I feared it would take if not guided properly. I feel very satisfied with the final outcome because it shows how the system of Reddit Webtoon can either be good or bad. 

My third essay was the Literary Review essay; the purpose of this essay was to form a thesis that could be supported by three points and argued against. My thesis was that Israel’s political and financial dependence on the United States has led to negative consequences for the U.S.. I wanted to write about this topic because it was deeply important to me and my values, unfortunately, I let these feelings show through my writing. My biggest drawbacks were my lack of rhetorical analysis, use of emotional language, and improper structure of citation. To fix this, I changed my body paragraphs to more explicitly analyze the scholarly articles I used, and I directly attributed ideas to the author. I rewrote my entire essay to particularly focus on the author’s purpose, claims, and data instead of my own ideas or feelings. Specifically, using words befitting rhetorical analysis. Additionally, I reformatted my in-text citations and reference list to fit APA 7th edition formatting.

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Ultimately, I feel as though my literary review has gained a deep enough insight into the articles I use for my argumentative point. The articles reflect my stance in a way that is unbiased and show that the authors’ perspectives align with my own. Another part of my essay I changed was my counterargument; in my original, I did not reflect enough on the counter arguments author’s perspective, and I skimmed over the purpose. In my revision, I solely use my counter argument paragraph to deeply understand the article and the author’s intent for the audience. My entire essay was almost completely rewritten, and I feel as though it has dramatically improved. 

In the end, this course has proved to be a humbling experience. I already knew I wasn’t the best writer, but at least I thought I was mediocre. My experience in this class has taught me to be more thoughtful of the criteria used to grade the assignments. To get the best grade possible, I have to understand my reason and purpose for writing. The process of writing may come easily, but the intention showing through the writing determines the grade. In the future, I will use what I have learned in this class to influence my writing purpose and to expand on my conclusions based on the sources I have chosen to write on. Instead of writing based off my ideas and feelings I will write based off observation, facts and analysis. To be a social scientist means to observe the social world through an unbiased lens, this class has allowed me to master this art