Jessica Mena

Professor Berghof

Writing 39C

11 December 2015

My struggles in Writing 39c

            I have always struggled with writing and have found the writing process to be very difficult because making my ideas flow and just trying to write them down on paper does not come naturally to me. I usually know what I want to say in my mind but I just do not know how to find the right words to express it in an essay. I also take a very long time trying to write any type of essay so I knew that coming into this class and writing research papers was going to be even more difficult for me. In particular for writing 39C I have struggled with integrating information from the scholarly sources I found into my Historical Context Project and the Advocacy Project but I especially struggled in trying to organize my ideas and making my ideas flow for both essays.  I struggled in both of these aspects because personally I found it to be very difficult. One of the reasons being is that since this class was my first research based class and the first time I have written a research paper, I did not know the format that the essays needed to have but I learned that there was not really a particular structure like other types of essay are required to have. Which for me, it made the writing process difficult because when I was trying to write my HCP I knew that my ideas were out of place, unorganized and did not flow.  That is why the days before I turned in my drafts for my HCP I would spend probably more time than other people just trying to get my thoughts down on paper; not knowing in what direction I wanted to go with my HCP, which also made it difficult to organize my ideas.  

           Before writing my first draft of my HCP I had an idea but not clear enough of what research question I wanted my essay to address and that’s when my struggle began. It was difficult for me to put my idea in words because I felt that I just had million unorganized thoughts all over my head. Therefore; for my first draft I did not focus on the most important part which was to show the damage that the negative stereotype of Welfare Queen has had on African American women and on others’ perceptions. Instead I just focused more on the history of African American women on welfare, explained the term “welfare queen” and then I went off topic by writing about causes dealing with ranother topic, such as how the communities that African American women are a part of face extreme poverty and as a result, makes it more difficult for them to receive adequate education which then later leads them to fall into welfare assistance.  That is why for the second draft of my HCP I had difficulty making my ideas follow smoothly throughout my essay. I should have not primly focused on introducing the problem of the welfare queen stereotype and its history throughout my essay but instead I should have focused on the significance of the problem at the beginning so I could have transitioned the focus of my body paragraphs to the causes, such as how reinforcing the stereotype has caused many people to think that welfare is damaging the economy vs. how other people think that the welfare money being given is not enough, but jumping from different causes to the history of the welfare topic made my easy difficult to follow because my ideas were not focused on my topic. That is why mixing topics in my essay made it difficult for me to achieve clearness and smooth transitions from paragraph to paragraph. An issue that I struggled throughout my HCP drafts. 

          For example, in screenshot 1 you can see that the paragraph that started with “According to Welfare Recipient…” focused mainly on something different than the causes and the 

significance of the welfare queen stereotype which instead explained why African American needed welfare. Due what this paragraph’s focus the comments that I received were very specific in telling me that overall the paper needed to focus on the causes of the stereotype not the causes of poverty. Reading the comments made me become more aware of the flaws that my paper had. I knew that my HCP lacked focus on the topic and that made my ideas go all over the place. I was just writing about causes unrelated to my topic and when I did write about the causes of the welfare queen stereotype it was a very brief and undeveloped paragraph.

          That is why my overall comment of my first draft of my HCP, screen shot 2, that I received from Professor Berghof was very similar to my second draft comment which advised me to “establish the significance of the problem;” however, I did not do so until my final draft because another reason that caused me to struggle when writing my HCP was that I failed to understand my topic completely. Now that I look back I have become aware that my confusion was part of why organizing my thoughts seemed to be difficult because what I needed my essay to establish was the significance of

the problem, which was welfare queen stereotype affecting African American women psychologically and also affecting others’ perception, followed by greatly focusing on the causes and analyzing whether the problem has changed from the past to the present.  Yet, for my second draft of the HCP I disregarded that comment and continue to research the wrong information. Most of the research that I conducted focused on how poverty has been one of the major issues that leads African American women on welfare and when I was writing my second HCP draft I failed to create a scholarly discussion because the scholars that I had read about only focused on the lack of education that African American have but rarely touched on causes of the stereotype. Therefore, not really understanding the fundamental components of my topic clearly made me research other things that correlated with the topic of poverty instead of the topic of the welfare queen stereotype.

          However, even though there were certain parts of my HCP draft 2 that weren’t very good, like the parts that I went off topic, towards the end of my essay I was able to come back to my topic by briefly stating the significance of the problem which was that the negative

stereotype of the welfare queen has caused psychological problems to African American women, 5^th paragraph (SCREANSHOT 3). Something that I should have focused on throughout my essay instead of focusing on it briefly but with the specific comments that I received in my second draft of my HCP, it helped me emphasize more on the significance of the problem for my final HCP and also it helped me organize my essay better because now I had a more clear understanding on what I needed to address. The comments that I received, more specifically the questions that I was given as a guide to introduce the significance of the problem (screenshot 3), helped clear up certain aspects of my topic that I was confused about, such as distinguishing the differences between the causes of the stereotype and the differences between the causes of poverty that was not part of my topic. I was also able to understand more clearly what direction I needed my HCP to take which was to fully elaborate more on the significance and causes of only the welfare queen stereotype throughout my essay without going off topic. The questions that I was given also gave me more help in trying to look for specific research that focused on African American women’s psychological low self-esteem due to the welfare queen stereotype.  Understanding what I needed to focus on also helped me create an outline for my final draft of my HCP. The questions severed as guidelines to formulate my outline and the comments that she give me, such as “using your third paragraph as the intro,” (screenshot 3) made me organize my thoughts before going straight into revising my paper without having a clear idea of how to do it.

          For example, you can see that I was able to overcome the issue that I was struggling with, organizing my ideas, with the help of the comments and the outline I made, in order to revise my essay for my final draft. In screenshot 4 you can see that I did take into consideration incorporating my 3^rd paragraph into my introduction.

After I read her comments, previous screenshot (3), what I did was reread my 5^th paragraph which addressed that issue and the significance of the problem. Then I read my 3^rd paragraph that focused on the present significance of the problem which explained how the problem of the welfare queen stereotype still continues today with Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign who was influenced by the stereotype when creating his commercial. Then once I read Professor’s Berghof’s questions again it made it a bit easier for me to reorganize my ideas.

          As a result, for my final draft I moved the part of the psychological damages that African American women have suffered, my 5^th paragraph of my second draft, to the beginning of my final essay and focused more on the significance of the problem by answering the questions that I received from the feedback. Screenshot 4 of my introduction of my final HCP shows how I now established the significance of the problem, who it affected and one of the causes of the stereotype. I was now able to start straight into my research paper by addressing my topic first rather than providing a long introduction about its history. Information that I could have used in my body paragraphs when presenting my multi-modal from the past in relation to how the problem has changed or has remained the same. After I was able to start off with the topic’s significance I then realized that what I took forever to address and what I struggled with, having smooth transitions and better flow of ideas/organization, was becoming a bit easier to me. In the final draft introduction, I was able to connect why the problem is important because it has affected African American women psychologically. More specifically it has caused them to have low self-esteem which makes them feel trap and does not permits them to obtain a job (screenshot 4). In addition, after being able to state the significance of the problem and indicate the people that it was hurting as well as one of its causes, transitioning between paragraphs seemed a bit easier as well. I was able to connect my first couple paragraphs with the significance of the welfare queen stereotype in present day and the causes it has had on people’s perception by using multimodal as evidence. Then after stating that it was less of a struggle for me to transition to the paragraph where I had to connect the past of the welfare queen stereotype issue and analyze whether the problem has remained the same. When I was writing the history paragraph I was able to move around some parts of my third paragraph and reorganize it in order to make my new paragraph more focused and create a smoother flow of ideas.

          Even though I have not mastered organizing my ideas in the first try and making my thoughts flow effectively I did continue to overcome those struggles in my final HCP

with the help of Professor Berghof and the online chat I had before turning in my HCP. Screenshot 5 above shows parts of the conversation Professor Berghof and I had discussing my topic. The online chat was very helpful because she was able to help me further understand what my research paper needed to include, especially is in regard to my topic. In the screenshot you can read that the idea of having an antithesis in my essay and what it could have been was becoming clearer as we were discussing it. With the online chat I was able to understand and become aware of how having a counter argument was important to include in my final HCP. Also how it was going to help my essay become more focus because I now knew that I needed to present evidence on both why welfare queen stereotype has affected people’s perception and has led them to think that welfare is damaging our economy and address that in reality, the money given to welfare recipients is actually not enough. However, most people think that the money being given to welfare recipients is excessive because of the welfare queen stereotype that they are constantly being exposed to.

          Aside from that, including an antithesis in my final draft made my argument stronger and showed how the negative stereotype of the welfare queen is in fact a problem which I was able to use multi-modals, such as presidential speeches, political commercials, and news clips to provide evidence and prove that the stereotype has indeed affected people’s perception. In addition, the antithesis continued to help me narrow down the specific economic effect it has caused by the reinforcement of the stereotype through politics. I was able to conduct more specific research based on scholars who believed and who have done their own research on how welfare has damaged the economy because of the “welfare queens” abusing the system.  For example, in screenshot 6, the new paragraph that I wrote for my final HCP focuses on how the author of the scholarly source that I used, Tanner, believes that there has been an over investment in welfare programs and that is should be stopped or the money should be reduced because it is not beneficial for the economy.

In this paragraph I provide evidence that supported Tanner’s claim with other scholarly articles and multi-modal, such as a graph, and because I was able to state the antithesis I was able to facilitate the transition between this paragraph and my following paragraph that stated that the welfare money being given to welfare recipients are actually not enough.

          My ideas began to connect better than in my previous drafts and there was a better flow between those paragraphs by using the idea that in reality not enough money is given to welfare recipients and that has affected them negatively after the paragraph that introduced the counterargument which was that the reinforcing of the welfare stereotype has blinded people by making them think that there are welfare queens abusing the system. After my counterargument I was able to transition to my argument.  A paragraph that solely focused on contradicting Tanner’s claim and created a discussion between them about the issue of the stereotype and how it has or not affect the economy. For example, in screenshot 8 it shows how I used a multimodal, chart, in order to support my argument that welfare funds are actually limited; however, even before that the way that I transitioned to this paragraph using “however, there has been debates about…” helped me organize my ideas for the rest of this essay.

What I once found difficult was becoming a bit easier after I had a more concrete idea of what I needed to focus on, really understood my topic and what I wanted my research paper to answer/address. However, I know that even though I have improved from my final draft compared to my first draft there are still certain aspects I need to continue to work on. For example, screenshot 8 shows part of my essay where I focused on how the welfare queen stereotype has actually caused funds to be reduced instead of “damaging the economy” but I did not provide enough support from other scholarly sources. If I would have added more evidence and more data on how TANF is actually cutting welfare recipients’ funds instead of overly funding welfare recipients my argument could have been more credible.

          I believe that my writing and I have come a long way from my first attempt in trying to write my first HCP draft and struggling to do so because I was not 100% clear on my own topic or because I just wanted to write down my thoughts on paper but in reality made it more difficult for me since I focused on the wrong aspects of my topic or a completely different topic. Yet, when I take a look of my final draft and compare it to my first and second draft I can see how I have improved. Overall, writing 39c did help me partly overcome those struggles in my HCP by helping me become more aware of them but also looking at those struggles differently. For example, I was able to use my struggles to push me to do better and put in more work into my research papers. However, even though I still struggle in organization and in the flow of my ideas in other essays I have written this quarter and I will probably write in the future, my HCP proves that the more I practice, revise and clearly understand what I need to address in my essay, will continue to help me make more progress in the future.