My Accomplishments

After finishing up my Exploratory essay, I feel much more comfortable with writing essays. Creating essays has always been a struggle for me due to stressing myself over little things. This affects my writing process because I tend to get nervous easily which definitely reflects poorly on my work. In this Exploratory essay, I had to choose between four amazing stories to write about and analyze in depth some Freudian concepts that is use throughout the story. In this case, I chose to write about “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates. Reading the first couple of paragraphs automatically grasped my attention which led me to write about how the author connects her story to Freud and his psychoanalytic concepts.

Throughout this essay, I have identified that Oates uses repression, splitting of consciousness and resistance on her characters and their way of being. This helps the audience understand the characters better so that they can get a broad understanding of each and every one of them. She also incorporates many examples of how the characters are going through these Freudian concepts. These concepts really help the audience, like me, understand the whole gist of the story and if you don’t understand, nothing will make sense. Also, it makes the story feel more alive and the audience can imagine that their one of the characters which would allow them to get a better feel to it.

My favorite part about this whole writing process was when we hit the stage of peer reviewing. My partner did an amazing job at giving me exquisite and positive feedback. From this, I knew that I wasn’t after all a horrible writer. On every essay, I continue to develop every day and learn more strategies for reading, drafting, revising and editing. With this, I was able to cut back on unnecessary sentences that were inputted in my essay and the ones that were somewhat repeated as well.

I am constantly growing as a writer which is why I like to take advantage of the feedback that my peers and professors give me. Having this privilege will for sure advance my writing skills and getting positive comments will up my attitude and give me energy to continue writing. From all of this, I was able to evaluate evidence critically so that my thesis was backed up and made sense. The story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” helped me understand Freuds psychoanalytic concepts better by incorporating them onto the characters.