Addy Malone

Ms. Michko

June 7, 2024

Reflection 2

Competition Argumentative Timed Write

The prompt for the timed write was along the lines of to what extent is competition

beneficial to an individual. I am a relatively competitive person, I have played contact sports

most of my life and learned pretty quickly that it is a great way to release any anger. But the

great part about the athletic competition is that most often it comes to an end by shaking the

other team's hand and telling them “Great Game”. With this prompt, I had to think about how the

competition in everyday life can affect an individual, not just on the field. In my first draft, my

claim stated that competition caused “more harm than good to the individual”, which was a

beginner's mistake. This was one of the first argumentative essays I wrote, so it was difficult to

write a nuanced claim. My immediate thought was the competitive nature of social media and

how it promotes self-deprecating behavior and in extreme cases can lead to eating disorders. I

had this idea because of the recent unit in class “What is the internet doing to us”. My second

thought was the recent growth in consumerism because of the constant competition to have the

best products. Yet I did not execute my thought process very well.

To begin my revision I refined my claim so that it applied more specifically to the

evidence I wanted to mention writing “ Competition can be a playful way to interact with peers

but can become negative when applied to real-life situations instead of games, it loses the initial

exigence of the competition.”. Although I did earn the thesis point and didn't necessarily need to

revise, I felt for my paper to have a strong line of reasoning I would need to make my claim
more specific. When reading over I noticed that the evidence I had made sense, they did answer

the prompt, yet they hardly took a stance on the question or argued a specific point. So I ended

up re-writing the majority of my work for clarity. This included adding a claim to the beginning

of each paragraph and developing it further through my commentary. This timed write just so

happened to be one of my shortest, not because it was concise, but because it was missing the

essential commentary of an argumentative essay. To strengthen my argument I added a “because”

statement immediately after my evidence, writing why that piece of evidence is significant to my

thesis. This revision made me realize how far I have come in my writing, not only that I have

strengthened my argumentative skills but I am now able to notice when a claim is weak. Which

is something I was not able to do earlier in the year.