Akosua Osei

Writing for The Social Sciences 21002

Alyssa Yankwitt

4/15/2022

Observational Essay Reflection

Writing this essay was very fun which wasn’t exactly surprising since the personal artifact essay was very interesting to write since it was personal and allowed me to access a part of myself that I haven’t accessed or paid attention to that much. I loved the fact that we did have several options to choose from for the place, event or thing that we were to observe. I did not have trouble writing this essay at all but what I did struggle with was how to structure the essay and the limiting word count. With the first essay, I also struggled with this, but my biggest problem is the word count since I have realized that I do have trouble with being concise but with peer review from my group members, Alyssa, and my friends outside of CCNY, I was able to be more concise and improve my word choice and the flow of the essay which allowed me to complete one of the Course Learning Outcomes which is “Develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of the writing process.” When writing the first rough draft of this essay and reading my initial notes, I did realize that I used euphemisms that not your ordinary person would know and I expressed myself in a way that without thorough explanation, the audience of the essay (Alyssa) would not understand, so I did ask for help from my friends outside of CCNY for help in regards to writing what I want to say academically so that it would not affect my grade and that I would be able to get my point across as a food critic and as a social scientist. With that, I completed the Course Learning Outcome: “Acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility.” My favorite part of this essay was looking back at the assumptions that I had about the place I was observing which was Fumo and the results I got. I expected it to be a fancy restaurant that the white upper-middle-class would go to receive small portions of food, subpar service, and subpar food but I was pleasantly surprised. I’ve gone to Fumo three times, and it has never disappointed me in regards to everything. This was a fun essay to write and I can’t wait until the next one.