Reflective Essay: Moving To Athens

In high school, writing papers was never an issue for me. I would often start my papers the night before they were due, full of energy due to the amount of caffeine I had in my system. One of the main reasons that I received high grades on my papers was not because I was under pressure, but because I knew what my teachers wanted to hear. Growing up in a small town and having a teacher as a mom, I knew most of my teachers personally. When I wrote essays, I was not writing about something I was passionate about; I was writing about what I knew my teachers would agree with. When I decided to move to Athens I was terrified. I am happy with my decision now, but back in August, I was scared of having to start over in a new city.

My move to Athens

I am a sympathetic individual and I feel bad giving anyone any type of feedback that might make one feel bad about their writing. After receiving my first grade back from my peer review response, I realized that I was doing more harm than good to my classmates. There is a fine line between giving out compliments and giving constructive criticism, and I was giving out way too many compliments. Looking back, one of the reasons why I did not want to give any type of criticism to my classmates was because I hate receiving criticism on my work. I hate having my work examined by others just to have every single one of my flaws pointed out. I feared criticism because I was not at home with myself. Now that I am at home with myself and my new environment, I am able to give better feedback to my peers. When reading others work I no longer fear hurting their feelings, but I help them by suggesting changes that I would make to my own work. Moving to Athens has been a huge step in my life, an introduction to the rest of my life. Ironically, when editing my papers the first thing I revise is my introduction. The main problem that I have noticed in my papers is that I have a problem with constructing a strong thesis and staying coherent throughout my paper. For my revision exhibit, I revised my thesis statement multiple times and made sure my topic sentences reflect my thesis. By just revising my thesis statement and