Assignment 8 Reflection

A necessary aspect of attending college or any school for that matter is that you are going to get homework. No one likes to do homework but it is essential if you want to learn anything new and advance in school. Occasionally you will also be required to write an essay or a report for your classes. It can be very difficult at times researching information and then ultimately writing the paper. However this can usually be completed within a couple days of working. Although every once and a while there is a twist thrown into the directions for the essay that may make it more difficult than normal, in my English class we received such an assignment.
In my English 101 class we were instructed to write an interpretive essay that addressed a question chosen from a list. This may not sound so difficult, which it was not. The question I addressed in my essay was; “What is the fine line between arguing on behalf of the truth and making truth up?” We were instructed to refer to and quote in detail three essays from our textbook, which applied to our topic.
Personally I thought this part of the assignment was fairly simple. I was able to find three essays that applied nicely to my topic, and was able to receive a lot of good information from them. A major point of my essay was that everyone looks at things differently, so something that may be true to one person may not be true to another. Everyone has a different upbringing and comes from a different background so we all look at things differently. In my essay I quoted from an essay in our text book called They have a Different Idea About That. I stated, “Each perspective in its own environment, or circumstance, will be true or valid-in that environment, in those circumstances. One statement that may be true in one person’s circumstance may be making up the truth in another circumstance.”
As stated earlier I felt that part of the assignment was no different than any other assignment. The more difficult part came when we were instructed to work on a collaborative essay with other students in the class. We were required to use each of our own individual essays together to address a broader question. We were then instructed to get into a group of two or three people and work on this collaborative essay together. For my group I only had one partner, which believe did make it slightly easier for us since we did not have a third question that had to be addressed within our essay.
My partner for the collaborative essay was Katie and the question which she was addressing was; “How might making truth up be a positive thing?” Our topics were fairly similar to one and other which I believe also made it slightly easier on us to form a collaborative essay around our two topics. A major point of her essay was that leaving out information is not necessarily lying. As well as if you are making up truth to help or protect someone it can be a positive thing. In her essay she states, “If someone thinks a different way than someone else, if they make the truth to get their point across I believe it is ok. In the end I think as long as you are doing it to help someone and you are not hurting anyone I believe it is a positive thing”
As a group we were instructed to write an introduction to our collaborative essay tying together each of our topics and addressing a larger question. Within our introduction we stated “There is a fine line between arguing on behalf of the truth and making the truth up, but when? In this situation it may even be acceptable to leave information out. How can making the truth up be a positive thing?”
I believe trying to combine our two essays into one that addressed both of our topics was the most difficult part of the assignment. Not only were we trying to make two completely different papers sound like one. We also had to work together on an introduction and conclusion to the paper. This is what caused most of the problems for us. As we stated in our essay everyone has a different way of looking at things and everyone has a different way going about their work. This is why it was such a challenge for us to complete our work as we each had a different idea about how it should sound.
Everyone has their own way they like to go about writing an essay, and their own particular word choice. Writing a paper with someone else can be a bit of a challenge sometimes, as one person thinks it should be written they way they normally do it. When the other person thinks that it might sound better written they way they like it.
Overall the assignment we were given in my English 101 class was challenging when we got to the end and to find some way to make our topics work in conjunction. I do believe it was a good experience for me, as I was able to receive feedback from one of my peers on my writing. I was also able to provide feedback to her as well, which I believe strengthened our essay in the end.