Khalid Alsaidi
Prof. Wise- Lawrence/ Dr. Robb
American Musical Theatre
03 December 2018
My First College Experience
After my first semester in college, I have fully considered that I have evolved as a writer. There are many new aspects of rhetorical strategies and ways of researching when making an essay that has not been previously taught to me that I had seen these past few months. This includes but is not limited to the use of historical articles from the New York Times website, use of the Gale Virtual Reference library and Oxford online and academic articles that help support my argument. However, writing an essay to me has become more than just conjuring a strand of 2500 words from me analyzing pieces of evidence from sources supporting my argument. No, what this semester taught me with adapting to all these new requirements to make this one final essay, with months leading up to it, this one essay that has made all my other past essays seem like children’s play, is that writing is not just the analyzation of the assignment in front of you. But an analyzation of how the writer’s mind responds to the task at hand and creates a unique response.
I can’t count the number of all-nighters I have had when I first started typing college-level essays, simply thinking “what in the world will my response be”. However, it became apparent to me that I would get the ball rolling when I started to dig deep into my topic at hand. I’d like to look at a past essay to show an example. Oddly enough with the final critical analysis paper, I probably spent over 25 hours collectively trying to figure out what the next sentence will be over and over again. And originally, I had no idea what my thesis was going to be. To be completely honest I created my thesis out of retrospect to the information I had. When I did create one it went like this, “despite racial tensions Oklahoma! masks use of racial motifs and disunity in an effort to present a sense of American Community during wartime using an all-white cast”. However in an overlook of my essay, I realized this thesis, in its alpha form, I felt was too broad and all over the place. I learned that a thesis is supposed to be based on a specific part of a topic you can support for ages, and with help from Prof.
Wise-Lawrence, my thesis became “Oklahoma! degrades African Americans by showing how the white community chose to marginalize the stand-in black character Jud”. The most dominant source of evidence I had, Andrea mosts “Oklahoma! and Assimilation” proved to be the most beneficial in my analysis of the musical and in helping me create my thesis. Alongside, with the several scenes of Oklahoma! that supported my reasoning including the conversation between Jud and Curly in the smokehouse scene and the notable events that happened in the year 1943 through my use of the New York Times. With all these sources and through my understanding of all these academic materials I was able to develop an argument that made sense. After I created this thesis and I began to look through additional resources that helped support my argument I realized my essay was slowly coming together. In a way, I would never expect, through my own cognitive thinking.
I look at the first essay that I created this semester, my personal narrative, and compare to my last one and I think to myself, “wow despite this being only a few months ago a lot of things changed”. My personal narrative contains many issues that would’ve had to be addressed on several different accounts. With the most prominent one being my use of MLA. My header is all over the place, with my name on one side and the date on the other. The use of the musical Hamilton isn’t italicized at all in the essay which would’ve been an issue today. the entire header doesn’t follow the correct format and I don’t even consider using quotes when I quoted directly from the musical, and even that is extremely basic. I’d also like to mention how super boring and confusing my hook/intro is to the essay. “ Before I watched my first musical, I was a very dull individual”. What does that even mean? It gives me the temptation to conduct a long interview with my past self to ask him what in the world was he thinking of in making this broad statement. By today I have learned that developing an intro requires a rhetorical strategy to understand my topic and develop a statement that is easy to elaborate for the writer and interesting for the audience. Essentially if I had to revisit my personal narrative and recreate the process of the assignment, now, instead I would analyze myself and literally ask myself, why are you dull? What makes you consider yourself to be dull? Think about my circumstances to come up with a great statement that would suffice the need for the audience to understand what specifically my issue is in regards to the narrative.
You may be thinking that I have been a little too hard on myself. However, I thrive on the criticism of my peers and educators. It is the best way, in my belief, to better yourself for even more challenging obstacles in the future. In fact, it was through a one on one conversation between Professor Wise-Lawrence and I when she reviewed my work thus far that I began to choose a different approach in the way I would support my arguments. In analyzing my work she pointed out a few errors within my essay I must revise before I make a full submission. It was through her criticism that I was able to leave that meeting knowing with full intention on how to create a great essay. Further increasing my knowledge on how to perceive this assignment were several in-class discussion. With one of our discussions having Professor Wise-Lawrence stating to the class that we have to figure out how Oklahoma! breaks the racial barrier should we base our argument that Oklahoma! is a musical with racial motifs which helped me decide what type of evidence to look for and in turn benefit my research
I began to see my work make a change for the better since the beginning of the semester around the end of October, when the assignment on blackboard, “Reflect on course objectives”, directed us to indicate if we have been following the FIQWS objectives and benefiting from them. Until I read and reacted to that prompt I had not realized how much of an impact watching the Oklahoma! musical had on my understanding of the task. In hindsight, of course, it is viable to watch the musical you’re basing your research on. However, I had an almost definitive understanding on what my topic will be about as I watched the musical and understood that there truly laid there in that Oklahoma! community a major issue that had to be addressed. In that assignment, I even state, ”If I find that there is an argument towards something that I heavily agree on, I believe that I can be very proficient in my writing skills to produce a well-written argument to support my side of the argument” (Alsaidi 1). A passion develops within the writer when they understand the prompt in a way that they could create an argument that’s liquidated with evidence.
In this semester I have been taught that college is a whole new ballfield. And that this is only the beginning of many more difficult challenges ahead. I am immensely grateful to Dr. Robb and Professor Wise-Lawrence for showing my peers and I the way to handle college level assignments. I see now that I have become better as a writer, but a writer can’t be complete without an effective understanding of time management. My final thoughts towards this semester, respectfully, involve me taking an insufficient amount of time towards figuring out how to engage my audience with a valid argument that I can support for hours at a time. However, with the new rhetorical strategies and methods of research I have learned the future’s looking bright as I continue to move on through college and be the best student I can be.
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