Jacobson 1

Taylor Jacobson

Professor Parry

English 2010

12 April 2020

Self-Reflective Essay

I wrote my final essay on the impacts of livestock grazing permits on public lands, and

the negative consequences of removing them. This is a topic that means a lot to me because one

of the biggest reasons I chose the career path I did is to help end conflict between ranchers and

the government. My purpose for this essay was to persuade the reader to consider different

resolutions to conflict, other than to just get rid of livestock grazing completely. While doing

research for this assignment, I realized just how much hate was targeted towards ranchers and

livestock grazing by so many different people. It made me realize just how big the conflict is,

and made me want to do what I can to resolve it more.

I made many revisions to my paper, and changed my specific topic and call for social

change many times. The more research I did, the more I wanted to talk about. This caused me to

feel very overwhelmed about my paper. This was the biggest challenge I had. My paper felt

disorganized, and seemed like I was ranting. I went back through and decided to change my topic

a little bit to tie my paper together a little bit. The peer reviews helped me by pointing out what

really didn’t go with my paper, and what seemed like fluff.

This assignment was different than ones I had in other classes, because it was something

that I am going to have to deal with for the rest of my career, and it seemed a lot more important

to me. In past courses I have had to write an argumentative paper about different topics, but this

is my favorite paper I have done because of how much I learned. I have always felt that I was a
 Jacobson 2

strong writer, but I put a lot more effort into this paper because of how important the topic was.

This class has taught me the importance of a topic, and how to best think critically about it to

achieve the desired results of the essay.

I would give this paper an A-. At the beginning I probably would have failed this paper,

but the more times I read back through it and made little adjustments the more confident I felt. I

feel that I pulled this paper together really well, and the reader will feel a strong call to action to

change the current management practices. However, I am sure there are still many flaws with my

paper, thus giving myself an A- grade. Overall, I really grew over the semester in my writing and

my thinking. I greatly enjoyed the class and appreciate what I learned.