Aaron Moore

English 101

Writing this Synthesis Essay was somewhat challenging, but overall a good experience. Throughout the process of writing this paper, I explored a variety of topics and techniques for approaching this paper. I finally found the right topic for the project and started working. This allowed me to focus on what makes or breaks me in writing and how well I can effectively communicate my thoughts and analysis based on sources I’ve conjured up. These sources pushed me into understanding more than I thought I already knew. Opening up my mind to what many Black women go through in Predominantly White InstitutionPWIs’s) allowed me to analyze the situation and why they face the struggle that they do in these specific environments. 

As I moved into the more technical areas of my writing, I stumbled upon challenges with my punctuation, which Grammarly and ChatGPT helped bring to light. This error became more apparent to me while rejecting and accepting suggestions from the bots. This constant correction helped me realize the amount of punctuation errors I had and have throughout my writing that many people, and I, usually don’t catch. I found it very helpful and enlightening to see the corrections to my writing, as I don’t usually get the revision for punctuation errors. The errors don’t bother me as much as I now feel more confident with the overall revision of my writing, primarily being based on punctuation. However, my essay being put through both Grammarly and ChatGPT showed a variety of ways to rephrase my writing and an influx of sugarcoating with little to no actual revisions. Most of my actual corrections that were non-punctuation related were just a multitude of formats that either changed the entire tone of my sentence by “softening” many descriptive words that I used to emphasize the history of something, or just changed the overall flow of my writing.  AI also had a tendency to shorten many of my sentences that wouldn’t necessarily make the most sense, as it would offer less context.  

However, the overall experience for the Synthesis Essay was good. Though I don’t necessarily support the usage of AI, specifically ChatGPT, using the AI generator for corrections for “man-made”-made writings could possibly help with finding errors within one’s writing that may not have been fully picked up when revised by others. I would like to use myself as a prime example for this case.  My synthesis essay has been peer reviewed by 2 to 3 people and has been looked over by my professor, but to my knowledge,e none of them have mentioned my severe punctuation problem within my writing.  Which isn’t a problem, as we all make mistakes and constantly read over things.  I just find it very helpful and eye-opening to see my writing be curated by an AI generator, assessed, analyzed, and receive critiques that I normally wouldn’t get.  With this new, profound information, I can say that my writing should get stronger as I continue to write essays throughout my years, as I am now aware of the punctuation issue I have within my writing.