My Writing Blog – Page 2 – Anna VanSeveren

Feels Right

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My second revision of the gender studies paper finally feels right, and Pennington must’ve thought so too because it’s ready for my portfolio! You know what that means…

Four essays down, two to go!

After my near breakdown in my last blog post, I decided to forgo mentioning Adele in the essay because I was worried it would cause me to lose focus with the main ideas. What I ended up doing is adding in more textual evidence to show the eroticism of the sea throughout the novel so that my claim that the sea is a symbol of lesbian love wasn’t so outlandish (although, I do still need to work on this for my final draft). I also took out some parts that were too general and polished up some little details.

Overall, I’m very happy with how this essay turned out, and I think it might be my best one so far. It was a lot of work, but I think it definitely paid off. So here, have a celebratory gif from my favorite soccer player:

In other news, there are only four weeks of the semester left, and oh my goodness am I feeling the stress. With the New Historicism draft due date coming up, a short story draft due, SNC Times articles due, piano juries on the horizon, and preparing for a huge speech, I’m swimming in stress (ooh, that would be a good band name). Four weeks feels like a lifetime when I want nothing more than to be done.

BUT. I will keep pressing on, because really, what other choice do I have? These final four weeks will be difficult, but it will feel so good when they’re over. I’ve worked harder this semester than I have in any other semester so far, and I can’t stop now. In the wise, wise words of Miley Cyrus: “Can’t stop, won’t stop.”

Girl

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Well, I was right. Pennington said that I focused a bit too much on LeBlanc’s argument of the “metaphorical lesbian” instead of making my own claim strong enough. But besides that, my first draft was pretty strong, so I can’t complain!

Pennington suggested that I bring in Edna’s relationship with Adele Ratignolle since there are also homoerotic undertones to it. I’m conflicted about whether to include Ratignolle or not because I really wanted to focus just on Mademoiselle Reisz and Edna, but it could make my argument stronger to bring in Adele. Stay tuned.

I’m also a little worried that my thesis makes too strong of a claim by saying that the sea in The Awakening is a symbol of lesbian love. I think I have to do a lot more work to convince the reader/other critics about that. Many feminist critics think that Edna’s suicide is a return to the womb, but with all the sensual language associated with the sea throughout the novel, I view the sea as more of a lover than a mother, especially when paired with Edna’s relationship with Reisz. Gah, I don’t know.

I do feel that I have a good start with this essay, but there’s just something missing or not quite right. With one or two more revisions, I know I’ll have it figured out, but I have to think about it a bit more.

Excuse me while I just let my brain explode onto this webpage. Maybe there’s a way to include Adele without having to write an entire paragraph about her? I could include a few remarks about her within my paragraphs about Reiz? Showing that Edna had a sensual relationship with more than one woman would make my argument stronger, but would it take away from the main focus? Do these questions even matter? What is life?

Ugh, I need to go to bed.

I Feel Good

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Three essays down, three to go!

After writing more critical topic sentences and making my thesis more relevant to Louise’s death, Pennington deemed my essay worthy of portfolio consideration. Party, party!

This truly means that we’re now halfway through the assignments in this class, and I’m left wondering where the time has gone. I’m sure I say the same thing at this point in every semester, but it really feels like this semester has flown by. Dare I say that the end is almost in sight? With four and a half weeks left of a fifteen-week semester, I don’t think that’s a wild statement to make.

I think this essay has been my favorite to write so far, and that’s probably because of my interest in psychology. To be able to apply that field of information to literature was really fun, and I’m really happy with how my essay turned out.

It really looks like my portfolio is going to be one huge dedication to Kate Chopin, and honestly, I’m not mad about it. It’s been so interesting to dive into her works, works that were far-fetched for the late 1800s, and still be able to see their relevance today. I’m excited to dive even deeper while writing the next two essays and see what I come up with. And yes, James Brown, I do feel good.

A huge high five to all my fellow 305ers for making it this far and not losing our sanity yet!

God Is A Woman

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Listen, I’m not a huge fan of Ariana Grande, but you’re so mistaken if you thought I wasn’t going to use this song in a blog post about feminism and gender studies. Like, really? I have to.

This is the first essay since the Close Reading assignment that I’ve felt completely lost. After finally completing the first draft, I think this could be my best paper yet or my worst paper yet. So there’s that.

Even though I felt totally lost, it wasn’t as stressful as the Close Reading essay because I knew what I was doing, but I just had so much information to sift through. I’m worried that Pennington’s comments will be that I’m using too many quotes from sources and not enough of my own analysis. But the sources I have are just so good and so quotable that it’s hard not to use them a lot.

Me while writing this essay:

I think my argument is solid? I think my analysis of the story is done well? I think my thesis is strong enough? But also maybe not? I really have no idea, but I guess that’s the fun of being in this class, right?

I will say this, though: I really enjoyed writing this essay. And yes, I enjoy writing most essays because I’m weird and like writing essays, but getting the option to do a gender studies paper using queer/LGBTQ theory was great. It was an easy choice to write my essay on this topic, and I had a lot of fun researching and coming up with my argument.

After analyzing Edna and Mademoiselle Reisz, two women from the Victorian era, a time teeming with heteronormativity, I was reminded of this gif:

And I’ll leave it at that.

Freudian

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The comments on my psychoanalytic first draft were (once again) better than I expected!

I have already done first revisions on this paper, and to be very honest, I don’t know if the first revision is much better than the first draft, but we’ll just have to see.

Dr. Pennington said that I needed to have a more critical focus throughout my essay because there was a tendency to talk about the story rather than applying the theory. Looking back at my first draft, I totally agree. However, I did have trouble trying to be more critical while writing my first revision. If the comments are the same on this first revision, then I’ll go in and ask Dr. Pennington for more clarification, but I do think I’m on the right track.

Since we’re just about at the midway point of the semester (what?!?!), I wanted to take a second to check in with how I’m doing so far. Now, I don’t want to jinx anything, but this semester is going really well? Is anyone else shocked? Because I am.

All of the dreadful horror stories told to me by previous ENGL 305ers aren’t coming to fruition. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m loving 305, but it’s definitely not the worst class I’ve ever had. I think the material is really interesting, and I do love the freedom we have to choose our own topics for the essays. Of course, I think the hardest two papers are the upcoming ones (Feminism and New Historical), but so far so good, and I want to hold on to the hope that things aren’t going to get worse. *fingers crossed*

Everything else in my life (other classes, piano, jobs, internships, clubs, etc.) is also going really well. I’m incredibly busy but still somehow manage to binge Netflix every once in a while. I just started “Dear White People” last night, and I already know I’ll binge the whole thing over the weekend, after I do my feminism proposal, of course.

Neurosis

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Alright guys, gals, and non-binary pals, the time has come to talk about Freud. I know, I know exciting, right?

Okay, I actually have a lot to say in this blog post about my psychoanalytic essay, so strap in because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Coming into college, I wanted to be a psychology major. I have always been fascinated with how the brain works and why people do the things they do. However, I was mostly interested in abnormal psychology and realized that it wouldn’t make sense to take a bunch of classes I wasn’t interested in only to take one that I was. So here I am now, an English major, finding out that I have to write an essay using psychoanalytic theory, and I’m genuinely excited about it. Looking into characters’ minds to find all of their hidden, repressed desires? Sign me up.

It was pretty easy to decide that I wanted to do a Freudian analysis of a text, but the hard part was deciding which text I wanted to write about. Having already written an essay on The Awakening, I wanted to switch it up a bit. I found another story in the anthology written by Kate Chopin, and immediately loved it.

The only problem was that I didn’t see how I could use Freud to analyze the story. I read the story probably ten times before seeing a connection to Freud’s idea of the id, ego, and superego. Now, I saw a connection, but will Dr. Pennington see a connection? We’ll just have to wait and see.

“The Story of an Hour” is such an interesting story, even though it’s incredibly short, and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t read it. I thought it was going to be difficult to write an essay on such a short story, but I found more than enough evidence for my claims. The thing I’m worried about most is that I haven’t written an essay like this in a long time, so I’m not sure if I’ve done it correctly.

At any rate, I actually enjoyed writing the first draft of this essay. I really liked taking a close look at a specific character and trying to figure out how her brain works. I don’t know, okay? The psychologist in me just really liked it; there’s no other explanation.

I’m aware that this essay is the one that students struggle with the most, so I’m fully prepared for Dr. Pennington to tell me that my entire essay is wrong. For now, though, I will enjoy my last few days of ignorant bliss before turning in my first draft.

Another One Bites The Dust

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That’s all she wrote, folks! I am now 2/6 (or 1/3 for all you math people) done with essays in ENGL 305. Here is the obligatory celebration gif:

And yes, I do think all of my final blog posts for each essay will be song titles, thank you for asking. Actually, you know what, I might just change all of my blog posts to song titles and then insert YouTube clips of the songs. Now that’s an idea.

After receiving Dr. Pennington’s comments on my first revision of the Summary and Eval paper, I was extremely happy to see that I wouldn’t have to do a second revision. Yes, revisions are great and all, but now I have more time to start my psychoanalytic draft and figure out what I want to write about. There are definitely a few things I can do before I put a final draft stamp on this essay, but nothing major enough to warrant a whole new revision.

Overall, I’m really happy with how this essay turned out. It was a struggle at first to try and make sure I had all the correct information in the summary. The Eagleton article was complex but really interesting, so thankfully, I didn’t have too much trouble with that. I think the evaluation was obviously a lot more fun to write because I got to insert my own opinion about literature (because at the end of the day, it’s all about my opinion, right?)

Aaaanyway, I’m very happy to be two essays down (even though there are four to go), and I’m looking forward to moving on to the next one!

Here Comes The Sun

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Comments on the first draft of the Summary and Eval essay were handed back and… *drumroll*… they’re not as bad as I thought!

I really felt like I was flying by the seat of my pants on this assignment, but I’m glad that it turned out as well as it did. I was especially worried about my evaluation because I wasn’t sure if my ideas were concrete enough, but I got some really helpful comments about how to make it even stronger.

I really enjoyed writing and editing the evaluation section more than the other sections, though, because I’m able to be a lot more personal and analytical of my own experiences and Eagleton’s definition of literature. I get to explain what I think literature is based on my past experiences, and I think that’s really cool.

In my first revision, I decided to add a bit more detail to my evaluation and make it a little more personal in order to really get my point across. I did this by making specific references to authors and works that have shaped my experience with Eagleton’s definition of literature.

Overall, I’d say I had a pretty successful first draft for this assignment, and I’m even more confident in my first revision. Here’s to more successful first drafts.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

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It’s time to celebrate because revisions of the first essay are over!

I only had to put my close reading essay through two revisions, and I’m extremely happy with how the essay turned out. The comments from my peers and Dr. Pennington were extremely helpful, and I feel they really helped make my paper better.

In terms of the next critical paper, I definitely want to work on being less general (using “it” instead of being specific) and use more textual evidence to support my thesis.

It feels really great to have one paper already done, and even though there are a lot of papers left, I definitely feel that I have the skills to tackle whatever is thrown at me for the rest of the semester. I now have to decide which book to read next, or if I even want to read another one. I enjoyed The Awakening so much that I’m honestly tempted to write every essay on it. Stay tuned.

The experience of writing this close reading essay started out really rough, feeling that I had no idea what I was doing. I’m almost glad I felt this way, though, because it forced me to be confident in my writing and my abilities. This experience will definitely help me with the other essays this semester, and I’m looking forward to what’s ahead!

Here, have another celebration gif just because.

Dog Days Are Over(?)

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Well, the first ENGL 305 essay has come and gone, and it’s now time to move on to the next one. The Summary and Evaluation assignment is definitely unlike any other assignment I have received in an English class, but is it weird to say that I’m kind of excited for it? Who am I becoming?

I feel like I finally have my schedule down (yes, I know we’re already almost five weeks into the semester), and I have newfound confidence with one essay under my belt. Even though this assignment does seem very different than the other ones in this class, I think it’s a good break from the more analytical essays we’re going to have to write later. It’s nice to write an essay where I can give my opinion without having to pile on textual evidence, just my own experience.

I’m sure it also helps that I really enjoyed the Eagleton reading. I thought it was really intriguing to see how the different definitions of literature have changed throughout history and how Eagleton shows the complications with each definition. Though a bit confusing at first, I found the Russian Formalist definition of literature to be really fascinating. It was cool to see how the New Critics took parts of the Formalist’s definition and used it in how they believed literature should be criticized.

Spoiler alert for my Summary and Evaluation paper (go read that!), but I do agree with what Eagleton proposes in his thesis. I definitely think that we value what we’re told to value by social groups in a higher power than us. It makes the most sense to me and doesn’t quite have the complications that the other definitions have.

Anyway, happy fifth week of the semester! I wish all my fellow English 305ers well in writing their Summary and Evaluation drafts! Godspeed.