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Neysa Haffner
ENGL 111
M: 6-8:50
Final Exam Essay
Self-Evaluation
Over the times of this class, the assignments got more difficult as the semester
progressed. While the assignments seemed to become more difficult, it was not completely too
difficult. I have a busy schedule as a full time student, working 30-40 hours a week, and having a
minimal social life. Sometimes its difficult because I may miss one of assignments, but most of
the time I try to keep myself on top of the essays, but sometimes they slip, so I spend the night
before and often the whole day before class to make sure I do a good job making an essay
acceptable so I can pass the class. Most of the time I had finished the essays days before class. A
good essay must include a thesis statement, body paragraphs of some sort, and a conclusion
paragraph to wrap things up at the end.
Over the class we have done four essay assignments. The first seemed the easiest at the
time, but now comparing it to the others, it was a standard essay. The first essay was the worst of
the essays I had done, but it had been about a year since I had written an essay. The last class I
had where I had written an essay was my senior paper during the fall semester of my senior year.
I had previously done another English class during my junior year, so the second semester of
English was not necessary. This essay did include a thesis statement, but it was a very weak
thesis statement and often was overlooked when needing to find and identify the thesis statement
during peer responses. The body paragraphs lacked in any great details and often will be jumbled

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around in details or run on sentences. The body paragraphs are important as they help guide the
essay along with its writing. The essay should also flow smoothly while reading and should not
jump around because it often makes the essay choppy and hard to understand. A conclusion was
not included in the first assignment, as I had never turned in a final edited copy of the essay and
the rough draft did not show the conclusion because I had become a procrastinator with the
rough draft then with the final draft also.
The second assignment was about reflective responses and responding to an essay inside
the book, which we got to choose from a list given. I had written mine over the essay is google
making us stupid? and found this one to be easier than the first assignment content and prompt
wise, but it was a bit more difficult because more things seemed to be required for this essay than
the last. This one seemed to be rushed because this one was done in three weeks instead of the
four weeks like the last had been. The thesis statement for this assignment was easier to locate
and identify than the first, but some people did not find it still as they had said it was still
difficult to find the thesis. It became apparent that more thought was needed to bring out and
make the thesis statement stick out better than the last one would need to be. It was not the last
sentence in the paragraph so that would be why people maybe have found it difficult to locate it
while other were easier to find. The body paragraphs were adding details and flowed better with
transitions than the previous, but they were still not perfect. The paragraphs became longer, but
they still seemed to ramble on and on about different topics rather than the topic of that specific
paragraph. The conclusion was included with this paragraph, even though it was only a few
sentences because I had not focused on having an elaborate conclusion for peer response and
actually asked my peers for help with writing a conclusion. The conclusion, when turned in, was
more than a few sentences but it is also not where it needed to be for college English classes.

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The third assignment was about an issue we felt strongly about and I had chosen to do my
assignment over eliminating the college cost for associates degrees in all colleges. This one was
more elaborate with the details in the body paragraphs and actually included facts and statistics
filled pictures about how eliminating the college costs would increase the graduation rates with
individuals. While the inclusion of the facts and statistics of the pictures were included, an essay
that disagreed with my stance was needed to be provided for the full credit. This part of the
assignment was most difficult because so many essays I found online agreed with my stance, but
after searching through hundreds of essays, I finally found an essay that disagreed with my
stance and was able to use it in my own essay to show the counterarguments that were needed to
be included in the essay. The thesis statement was also a lot easier to locate and identify for the
readers I had read for peer responses and I was overjoyed that they were able to find the thesis
statement after the previous two assignments being difficult to locate within the introductory
paragraphs. The conclusion was also well put together and helped wrap up the arguments and
even offered a solution on how we could help make college free to the associates degrees level.
The fourth assignment was an evaluation about anything we wanted it to be about. I had
written mine over the cartoon choices of Cartoon Network and the lessons they were teaching
kids subconsciously. The shows were very inappropriate for the children to be watching at a
young age and were offered within the daytime, where kids would often being sitting and playing
by the TV. Even though they would not be watching the shows, the dialogue would be in their
brains and would linger there to teach them later. The thesis statement was very noticeable and
seemed to stand out like a long set of lights in a dark night. It listed the criteria that children
shows needed to follow so that they learn good morals and values to use later in their lives. The
body paragraphs were started with a statement with the criteria it was going to be talking about

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in that certain paragraph. It used more details and stories about observations from myself and
parents on my Facebook when I conducted the surveys and the results were what I thought they
would be. The parents spoke strongly about how they often dont let their children of any age
watch Cartoon Network because it was teaching them bad habits. The conclusion paragraph
listed both sides of the argument and listed a solution of how Cartoon Network should handle the
problem with their TV shows.
Throughout this semester, while I was writing these assignments, it made my writing
stronger as a whole. They helped with developing paragraphs and thesis statements and how to
make them more elaborate to make them more college - level. Now I feel like I can write most
any prompt given to me and succeed with it.