Descriptive Essay Writing Process

While writing the descriptive essay, I struggled with not providing enough sensory details in order for my audience to visualize my room. I also struggled with subject-verb agreement. I would start a sentence describing an item I mentioned in the previous sentence. Through Professor Rodwell’s feedback, I was able to correct these sentences. I also struggled with maintaining the theme of why my room is important to me in each paragraph. Although I ended up getting a 17/25 again, I did make progress in my writing.

What I Learned:

• When to use commas
• Separate run-on sentences
• Being consistent with verb tense throughout the essay
• Not to leave my audience with unanswered questions
• Sensory Details
• Writing my essay with a panoramic lens

Descriptive Essay Final Draft

Whenever I need time for myself or feel exhausted, I go to my room. If I need to get away from my family or a quiet space to do homework, one can also find me in my room too. A place where I feel safe and comfortable to be myself. Where I can express my personality. It’s mine. Even though my room may not be the biggest in the house, it’s perfect for me. My room isn’t very big, maybe around 17 feet by 10 feet, with a bed, closet, dresser, and two desks. My room always smells like this baby powder scented perfume I got from Bath & Body Works called Sea Cotton because I always overspray in the morning when I’m running out of the house. The walls are painted in a pastel mint green color. I drag my hand down the wall and feel the bumps made from the thick paint on my palm. The bumps feel like a hand exfoliator scrub as it rubs along my palm. I decorated one wall in the room with photos of all my friends and family. I also stapled a mehndi designed tapestry to the wall behind my bed. The tapestry is black and white with a centered blooming flower that grows out and spreads its petals across the entire fabric. By the right side of my bed there lays a dark grey rug with soft microfiber tiny noodle shapes popping out. As I run my toes in between the rug it makes me feel as if I’m walking on a cloud. In front of my bed lies another carpet, not as soft as the first one, but this one matches the color of my wall. It is covered with clothes I’m too lazy to fold or throw in the hamper.

Every morning, I look outside my square-shaped window to see what kind of day it will be. I also look for what people are wearing to give me an idea of the temperature outside. As I walk back to my comfortable twin-sized bed to lay down upon, until I feel like I need to start getting ready for school, I hear some of the dark cherry oak wood floorboards creak. My bed is the best place to relax because the fan, suspended in the middle of my room, is always turning clockwise. Allowing for a constant fresh current of air in my room. Although it’s made for sleeping, my bed is also where I facetime my friends on my laptop, write my essays and shop online. Sometimes I just lie down on my bed and listen to music on my headphones loudly. My room turns into a stage where I pour out my heart into the songs I hear in my ears. As I listen to the music, I am transcended into my own little world thanks to my room. My bed is also the first place my cousins retreat to when they visit because of its’ comfiness. Right next to my bed is a tiny plastic black desk with six clear bins that you can pull out. The sizes of the drawers increase as you work your way to the bottom of the desk. The two top drawers are filled with a variety of nail polish, hair ties, and different sized brushes. Whenever I open either of these drawers an instant smell of nail polish hits my nose. The next drawer is filled with old school supplies that have never been used like packets of looseleaf, pencils, pens, and highlighters. The middle drawer is filled with random items that didn’t fit anywhere else in my room like a facial cleanser brush, curly hair products, face masks, etc. The last drawer contains an old, red jewelry music box my grandma gave me. When I open it, it plays soothing but fast winded up ballerina music. My room allows me to relive good memories and express myself openly, which is why it is my safe haven.

Across my room, is my dresser. It is white and made out of the same fiberboard my bed is. As I run my hand across the top of the chest, I feel the cold smooth feel of the surface until I feel over a rough patch of where I once spilled an entire bottle of pure acetone. Connected to the dresser is a big mirror that curves at the top. On the sides of the mirror are tiny polaroids of my mom, sister, and goddaughter. I also have three random stickers pasted to the mirror. One of the Apple logo, another of the Vans logo, and a tiny minion sticker. The top of my dresser is a mess. In one corner of my dresser, I have all my makeup related items. An unorganized makeup box that is too tiny so a lot of the makeup products are stacked onto each other. Two mason jars, one clear and another painted mint blue, filled with fluffy face brushes and eyeshadow brushes. Then a small stack of tiny eyeshadow palettes. Towards the middle of my dresser, I have a jewelry holder that my mom gave me for Christmas. It’s a flower that has a gold tree sticking out of it. On the branches of the tree, I hook on my hoop earrings and charm bracelets. In the final corner resides my scentless deodorant, all my aloe vera scented curly hair products, bubbly facial cleansers, and strong perfumes. My dresser has six drawers, three on one side and three on the other. Each drawer has a specific clothing group, which means all my jeans go together, shirts and sweaters go together, and so on. Although my drawers are organized in groups, they are very messy. All my shirts are jumbled in a bunch like vines. My jeans spill out of the drawer. I don’t always fix my drawers because in my room I get to be carefree and indifferent to organizing my drawers, whereas I am not able to be free of these responsibilities, like cleaning, outside of my room.

Adjacent to my dresser is my second desk. This too is eggshell white and made up of the same smooth fiberboard that both my bed and dresser are made of. It has a minimalist look to it because it only has two drawers and a small shelf. The top of my desk has my 32-inch SHARP plasma tv, a tiny black cable box, a monochromatic grey house phone, and a black Epson printer. The first drawer has documents on CCNY and old drawings of some of my favorite childhood cartoon shows, like Brandy & Mr. Whiskers or Yin Yang Yo!, that I created. The small drawer right next to it includes a bunch of cables and chargers, for my Ipad and TI-84 calculator, all bunched together. Beneath that drawer is the shelf where I keep memorabilia from over the years, like my hot pink Nintendo DSI I got from the Christmas of 2014 and all the games I have for it. I always enjoy going through the old birthday and holiday cards I have been keeping since the eighth grade. I also have an old, tiny photo album filled with baby photos on me. I love going through each card and photo because it reminds me of good times. It’s a part of my room where I can always go back to smile and clear my head of any negativities.

My room is the place where I can go do my homework without distractions. My room makes me feel comfortable because it is my own space. My house is always hectic, with my mom always talking on the phone, and my sister watching the living room tv really loudly. My room is the only place in the house where I can go and relax without caring about everything else, the only place that I can go to clear my mind.  

Descriptive Essay Self Reflection

The descriptive essay served to describe a person, place, or thing while maintaining the main point of your description throughout the essay. With completing this essay, I was able to reflect upon my writing process and learn a few course learning outcomes.

There were many components I had to consider in my essay. One component I had to consider was the genre. Since the genre of my essay was descriptive, I had to find different ways of describing my room to an audience. The genre matters because a descriptive essay was the best way to describe my room. I wouldn’t have been able to describe my room with a narrative essay because then the assignment would have been a story about my room and not describing my room and it’s importance. Because I wrote a descriptive essay, I followed the instructions for this assignment and wrote about one place, my room. Another component I had to consider was my purpose. Throughout my essay, I think I did a decent job of stating the purpose of why I was describing my room. While I mostly just described my room in this essay, I tried to connect each paragraph back to the main theme of my essay. As a result, I think my essay flowed naturally in the sense that the paragraphs were organized into different areas of my room. I moved some ideas into other parts of my essay so it could provide more detail. An example of this would be when I moved the part of “oak wood floorboards creak” from the first paragraph to the third. As a result, the essay made more sense in that it fit into what the paragraph was talking about. The audience would also find this most effective because now they can picture me walking back to my bed and hearing the noise the floor makes. I also had to consider the audience, design, and exigence in my essay.

When approaching the audience, I felt like I did a good job in the sense that I provided sensory details for the reader to follow. It allowed the audience to connect with my story and create a vivid image of my room. For example, by explaining the designs and colors of my tapestry in my room, it allows the readers to picture it in their heads. My exigence for writing about my room was because my room is special to me. My room allows me to transcend into my own little ‘world’. My room also allows me to express my personality and relax, which is why I felt like my room would be a good place to describe for this assignment. In regards to the design of my essay, I felt that my exigence and purpose should be shown in my conclusion. The conclusion helped illuminate the main point of why I choose to write about my room. This ultimately helped my essay come to fruition.

Overall, this assignment helped me achieve several course learning outcomes. I learned to explore and analyze, in both my writing and readings, two texts and the five rhetorical situations. I learned to explore my writing by expanding my mind to the different ways an essay can be written. To elaborate, I was able to broaden my perspective on how essays should be formatted whether formally or informally. For example, writing a descriptive essay was new to me since it didn’t follow the regular essay format I usually do like an intro, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. I also learned to analyze my writing by completing rough drafts that were peer edited in order to find better ways to improve the essay’s mistakes. Before writing this essay, I read two descriptive essays. “Girl,” by Jamaica Kincaid, helped prepare me on how to use diction in order to create vivid imagery for a good descriptive essay. An example of how “Girl” uses diction would be “Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry” (320). By specifying the colors of the clothes, Kincaid allows us to envision the clothes drying outside on a clothesline on a Monday or Tuesday. “Ours Was a Dad,” by Judy Davis, helped prepare me on how to use adjectives and sensory details to illustrate a good description. For example, “Ours was a dad who believed our round oak table that seated twelve when fully extended should be full at Thanksgiving” (2). By using adjectives to describe the table and stating the number of seats the table has, Davis allows us to imagine her family seated around the dinner table during this holiday. In addition, I used different techniques to improve the writing in my essay like proofreading, elaborating on ideas, and outlining. I used proofreading when checking over the verb tense I used throughout the essay. I also the strategy of elaboration when describing all the things in my room and expanding on why my room is important to me. Lastly, I used outlining in organizing how my ideas should flow from paragraph to paragraph.

These techniques allowed me to build my essay and expand on the content. I also learned to recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when writing by considering the target audience, genre of the essay, its purpose, my exigence, and context that would be included. Lastly, I engaged in collaborative efforts during the writing process with peer review and group work. This helped when I had to write the final version of my essay because it allowed me to look at different ways to improve my writing. Peer review was also useful because of the grammatical focus. As a result of peer review, I improved a few sections, like verb tense, in my essay which helped keep the essay in the present.