Ismael Luz Romero

ENG 21001

Professor Wood

MAY 20 2025

Final Self-Assessment Essay

Writing is the art of collecting your own ideas and expressing how you feel about certain topics. Writing gives you the opportunity to release all the thoughts that you have in your mind and speak about what you like. Being able to speak your mind to the world allows you to explain your thoughts and it helps people know more about you and your beliefs.

In my opinion, writing allows me to fully express my ideas but also, I get to expose all my thoughts in my head and my opinion on topics that happen outside in the real world. I feel appreciated being able to write what I think because I can open up about anything and give details on what I think is wrong and good. Although I prefer to speak to other people about anything that happens, I feel like writing helps me remain anonymous when I post online because there are people out there who judge on what people believe and that makes me a bit insecure but, being able to write about what I believe and seeing people reply and give their own opinion, it helps me realize that writing is a gift that everyone should appreciate because it opens your mind and helps you see the perspective of other people.

In this class, I was able to learn about topics in CUNY which I knew nothing about, and it also made me realize the struggles that CUNY has been through ever since it opened. I did not know that CUNY was only allowing students who had high grades and the ability to afford tuition rates. I wasn’t aware of the struggles from students who came from poor neighborhoods. Not being able to attend college because you don’t have the grades and the money to pay tuition was not something I expected from CUNY because I always thought that CUNY allowed anyone from any background to attend college at a lower cost. This is where different resources came into hand. They allowed me to look deeper into articles about the ongoing issues in CUNY ever since it was first funded until recent years. Many of these resources had used a unique source of language which expressed the details about how CUNY handled students back in the 1960’s. Starting off with the first project; when looking for resources to back up my idea of protesting against wrongdoing which happen in campus such as protest and riots, I found similar language which attacked students for their actions and all the damages they were causing to CUNY. These resources were able to persuade readers that the students were out of control and deemed a threat to the community. Exploring through the internet allowed me to hear hundreds of stories about a certain topic but also gave me more experience in searching for resources online which gave me correct and accurate information on ongoing events which are affecting the communities today. Throughout the semester I was able to slowly master the use of internet, and I feel like this was a great booster for future English classes which would require me to find resources online.

Additionally, the use of online searching allowed me to make my second project which was an annotated bibliography much easier. It was a quicker and faster process of finding good articles which were rich in information and had fact checked information. The annotated bibliography strengthened the way in which I evaluate resources such as finding the author of the article in order to cite the source in an MLA format. Later, I was able to grab specific quotes from sources which backed my analysis and supported my thesis. Although it was difficult to analyze every sentence in the articles, it helped me choose the quotes which were much better and were connected to my beliefs. After finding the correct quotes, I was able to analyze and paraphrase on what the author from the article was trying to say and then tie it up to what I thought about the information they said. Overall, it was a very good project which gave me more experience in spruce finding and analyzing.

Moving on to the third project which was “Making a Difference at CUNY.” This project was full of many objectives which I had to accomplish in order to achieve a rich and fulfilling project. In this case, I was hit with many requirements which I felt like I did not spend enough time mastering so I could make my project faster and easier. I struggled a lot with choosing a specific topic and articulating a stance in my project. I was not exactly clear what my stance would be but, I know I wanted to do a call-to-action, and it was specifically aimed at college students. Although at first the genre was not what I was looking forward to doing, I decided to go for a newspaper style which would be the front cover of newspapers. I had to do massive editing on my first draft because it did not look good at all, and I was struggling to brainstorm good ideas and writing goals. I did not have any specific strategies in creating a specific draft so, I really felt like I lacked this section compared to the rest. At the end, I began to sort of imagine what a newspaper would look like and styes which would catch an eye on people. The goal was to create a relationship with students who attend college and sort of create an aspect in which students would interact with my beliefs and agree to what I tried to explain. I wanted to create an environment in which students would feel safe and have the same purpose as I did. It was important to state my stance and beliefs on the ongoing visa revocations which are affecting hundreds of students. I want the audience to understand what is going on and how this issue is affecting international students across the country. The goal was to bring everyone together and start a protest to fight against these unjust laws.

Overall, throughout the semester I was introduced to many new activities and projects which challenged my skill of drafting, revising, editing, and submitting. Although it was difficult in the beginning, throughout the semester I began to get more fluent on each of these skills and now at the end of the semester, I feel like I have improved more compared to last semester and previous years. I believe all of the work that was accomplished this semester has led to me becoming a bit better in wiring papers not only for this class, but other classes in which also require research papers.