Reflection Paper

Before starting English 1102 I was so excited because I knew who class I wanted to take; but, his class was full. I was a very sad cookie. Then my friend Josh told me her knew a professor that was better than the one I wanted and that I would love her class. I’m glad I trusted Josh and took this class. In my English 1102 class I evolved as a writer, experienced a lot of new things, made a few mistakes, and learned from them.

English 1101 is the first of many Humanities courses I will take. It was not only enjoyable but provided a good building block for my future educational route. I learned many new skills and sharpened old ones with Mr. Atkins. With this knowledge I will proofread, correct errors, and display everything as simple as possible. I will use this knowledge as a stepping stone for my next English course and future essays I will

After completing English 1101, I expected English 1102 to be easier. When I started doing the work in the class and taking tests, I realized that the work was a little more challenging. Now that I have finished the second part of this course, I really have grown to like reading and writing. This course is a great course to take because it has given me a lot of knowledge on how to write a great paper, and it taught me there is a lot of things to write about.

As I look back on my English 101 experience, I have come to the conclusion that I have learned many new things that have improved my abilities as a writer. I have learned some new techniques that have improved my ways of approaching an essay. I learned all about the rhetorical appeals and how to apply them in my writing and how to look for them in a essay written by a author. I have also learned how to argue both sides of a argument, and how to look for reliable sources and to properly quote and site the author of the essay. I feel as if I have become a better writer and my improved writing skills are shown within each essay.

Over the past year I had a chance to develop a deeper understanding of what it takes to develop successful paper. Taking English 1010 was a great experience because it prepares students on becoming better writers through college life. Even though this is my second year in college I was unable to take English 1010 the first year, but taking this class truly show me what college professors are looking for when we are ask to write a successful paper. College professors expect every student to be able to evaluate each topic and be descriptive in their essay.

The things learned during the class, English 203, has not only helped the ability to write better, but also the ability to expand the research on each paper I have written. From the very beginning of this semester, I was taught to write an abstract, which I have never done before, but the basis of an abstract is to look at the big picture and take all the important points of a paper. Also, the papers that was written throughout the semester was not all based around one topic. The topics varied from sciences to engineering feats, while also coming up with our own business proposal where we learned how to format and make it a clean presentation of the idea, and finally we had to research Spartacus, and how it relates to history whether it is historically accurate or not. Taking English 203 has furthered my ability to write papers learning different techniques and ideas making myself a better writer.

In my first paper, “Depression: A Plague of the Mind,” I realized that I was struggling with grammar. Out of all of my papers, it had the most issues. I did not cite some of my statistics and my words needed to be refined. Word choice was another weakness of mine when writing. I forget to be formal with what I write, so I tried to work on the word choice as we continued with the semester. I think a big strength of mine is coming up with ideas and organizing my thoughts. My papers had good structure and ideas were in order. I also felt I was good at hooking in the reader and tying the conclusion back to the hook. I feel my grammar improved a lot as I continued to write and is not as much of a problem anymore. I also see the my word choice has improved some as well, but it could still use some work. This class helped me grow so much in my weak areas and now I have more strengths than I started with.

Throughout my entire life I struggled with English. I always had trouble writing an effective well-organized essay. Throughout my education I had always received bad grades on my essays. From constantly received bad grades I slowly began to give up, and I slowly began to lose hope in English. I asked myself, would I ever improve in writing? Or will I continue failing. I signed up for English 101A and I walked into the classroom with and open-mind but extremely nervous. Because in my head I am thinking this is a college class and it is going to be way harder than high school English. You know it wasn’t that bad after all, I ended up getting better grades in English 101A, than I ever did in high school English courses. I was jumping in joy when I passed English 101A, but I immediately stopped jumping because I knew I had to take another English class and it had do with research. It was my biggest nightmare, knowing this, I was really nervous when signing up for English 102, because I was scared of not doing well or not passing. But I had no other option and I went for it. Looking back to the beginning of English 102 with professor Deadrick I learned a lot and developed many skills that I didn’t know I had or knew. Throughout English 102 I have improved my outline strategies, critical thinking, my writing skills and grammar.

Throughout this school year, I have written many different kinds of papers. Those different kinds of papers include narratives, analysis, and arguments. This year in English, I was very successful with some of the parts of my papers, but there were other parts I struggled with. I had some things like my introductions and the way I explained things that were great. But things like my conclusions and my transitions still needed some work. So, throughout this year I have been working to improve those things.

What did you learn this semester? The golden question from all friends and family members when you come home for breaks. One would think that since my first language is English, writing papers would be easy. It should be, but it is not. I have learned that my writing was not as good as I thought it was. I have learned that throwing a paper together last minute does not work as good in college as it did in high school. I realized early on in the semester that I have trouble analyzing pieces of writing, I can give a summary all day, but analysis is not a strong suit of mine. Sometimes teachers believe that we automatically know how to write, we are not born with reading skills. It would be hard to believe if someone said that they learned nothing from English 111. From English 111 I learned that summarizing is not the same as synthesizing. I also learned that I needed to strengthen my critical reading, thinking, and composing skills. I also gained a better use and understanding of rhetoric knowledge such as audience, purpose and evidence. In conclusion English 111 taught me to be more aware of my conventions in writing. I believe that I have gained knowledge in critical thinking, rhetoric information, and conventions from this semester that have strengthened my writing and I can provide examples to back the clause.

Pastors need mentors, mentees, and true peers. I have enjoyed a long-standing relationship with two pastor colleagues both in very different places in life and ministry. Yet, even from these different places, all three of us share some very basics understandings and needs as we strive to serve the church. Rev. Bev Dempsey and Rev. Nikki Brown Rice are the two selected clergy persons I chose for this connection exercise. All the best plans were intended to email and create a great long thread of emails to turn in. One thing we all have in common is that we are much better face-to-face connections than in email. Therefore, when given the chance to decide to connect through email versus personal conversations, we all agreed on personal conversations.

Reviewing the idea of good fortune in one's life caused me to realize a lot about how I want to live my life, and how I should impact others by living my life to its fullest potential. Its opened me up more to the role of religion in my own life, causing me to realize what I need to work on and how I need to not change. The vast majority of my life lies in front of me and right here, right now, is where I need to focus and be present because I have been put on this earth for a reason, but I am yet to figure out what that reason is. This is not something that worries me, but rather inspires me because I will always know that I mean something and this sheds light into the darkest of times. These three questions of who God is, why does one receive good fortune, and what really is religion that have lingered about me for the vast majority of life have finally begun to resonate with me. I do not fully understand what the role of religion in my life is right now, but I feel that I do not need to understand what it is right now because I can already see myself growing to make religion more prominent in my life. Now it is one thing to say that I am beginning to understand how these questions are being evident in my life, but it is another thing to understand how it is that I will change myself to become the fullest person that I can be. Because in my life I have been one to say something, and more often than not have followed through with my word. So this

One evening, I was studying for my final exams with my friends in the library. We were there for almost the whole day, and most of us got a most of our assignments and studying done. As I meandered down to the printers to print my philosophy paper, I could not help but discern that some of the students around us were also getting their assignments done, albeit rather languidly. A closer look as to what they were doing showed that some students were checking their social media and watching Netflix, while others were online shopping. In other words, they were procrastinating. I knew that our studying period was brief; in fact, we had two or three days until our first finals started. I had a few compelling speculations on why people procrastinate, from that they know everything (unlikely), to they do not know what to study (more likely), or the fact that they are just lazy (very likely). Though I am also a victim of procrastinating, I try to focus on my studies, especially if it is exam season. My insights turned to reality when I asked my friend about something that we were supposed to study for the calculus exam. It turns out that he was watching a football game on his laptop, but he muted it to answer my question and to show me how to do a problem. He proclaimed that he will study it later, even though our exam was in less than forty-eight hours. He knew what and how to study, but he told me he wasn’t up for it. I observed that this is a familiar episode – every time a

In Senior year, my only goal consisted of finding platforms that would provide optimal opportunities to convince colleges they need me at their schools. To reach my goal, I took the ACT fives times, constantly checked my GPA average, and volunteered frequently. None of this, however, compares to the biggest step I accomplished while working towards my goal: Completing Composition 1. When I signed up for my first college class, I imagined a scene similar to that of a movie with a huge room containing over one hundred college students brainlessly jotting down notes from a professor's PowerPoint. I did not expect the class to look similar to an average high school classroom. However looks can be deceiving, and upon my journey into a transition between a high school experience to a college one, I found the level of difficulty to increase tenfold. Everything needed more effort, more time, and more evaluation. What I thought I knew about writing was flipped upside down and rearranged. Composition I taught me more than I thought I would learn in the class. The course taught me how to use the writing process to improve my writing and utilize various grammatical sentence structures, as well as produce impressive summaries over any college reading thrown my way.

In junior high and high school, I reached a height of 5’2”. I did not have any more growth spurts after I reached that height. I gradually began to increase my weight because I was developing more muscle mass. My body changed and became toned with all of the sports and core activities that I participated in. When it comes to puberty and sexual awareness, I was scared and nervous because I did not know what menstruation was until I first started my period in junior high school. I was nervous that something was wrong with me, so I talked to my mother. She began to explain what was happening to my body and gave me advice to cope with the changes. In this stage of my life, I did not have any major illnesses or accidents. Occasionally, I caught the common cold and my allergies acted up, but I did not develop anything serious. Once or twice I developed strep throat, and I saw a physician to receive antibiotics to clear it up. During junior high school, I continued dance and cheerleading. I had dance practice twice a week during the evening, and cheer practice twice a week after school. My exercise level increased when I joined high school because I devloted all of my time to one sport. I chose dance over cheerleading, and tried out for the Pizzazz Poms Varsity Dance Team. During this sport, I practiced five times a week for two hours. When it comes to my eating habits, my mother always cooked me a healthy breakfast before school and packed my lunch. Before