A Journey of Personal Growth
Becoming a college student has always seemed so far away; an eternity would pass before I grew up and became more mature. Yet here I am, a Running Start student who was given the opportunity to experience college at a younger age than is standard. Being able to start a little bit earlier has indeed been beneficial. At first, it was definitely intimidating, for it is such a different pace than what I have become used to; a slow paced kind of education. I have noticed that I am a fast learner, so taking my education slow was not really an option for me. That is why I took the challenge of more complex learning at a community college. After investing much time and effort, my writing skills have improved tremendously Coming fresh into college, there are a lot of basic classes that everyone needs to take. One of them is English 101, a class that is required for every degree that is offered here at Highline. I knew that it would not be easy, especially for me. I was never a good writer, for there was always something that I was struggling with, such as not going deep enough, or the writing being very bland. I put some of the blame on my past teachers;, their way of teaching how to be an effective writer was not effective. What they taught was very structured and did not leave much room for a student to grow.
As we come to a closing in this English 101 course, I can confidently say that I am leaving with much more knowledge than when I first
For the summer of 2015, I enrolled as a student in University of Maryland University College (UMUC) to start the journey of earning a bachelor's degree in Cyber Security. For the starting course requirements, Writing 101s was one of the three classes I had picked to begin with. When I first started off in this course, I considered my writing skills poor, with unorganized paragraphing and horrible grammar skills. Now, I am able to write great with more organized essays, proper sentence structures, and also gained researching skills for future research projects or assignments. This course has dramatically increased my confidence in writing and I feel that I am able to write at college level and not middle or high school.
During this semester, the realization of my past was that I have often skimmed through parts of the writing process to get the job done. Not being an avid reader often hindered my writing abilities. This class most definitely made me realize that the entire writing process is important and having peer reviews also helped significantly and certainly made a difference in the result of my work. Taking the time to read, brainstorm my thoughts, write an outline, rough draft after rough draft, reading constructive criticism of others helped in the revisions of my papers’ reaching the best possible outcome. When selecting English 102, I knew I would be challenged, but to what extent I was unsure. If like past English courses that were taken learning to write essays would be the goal. Once realizing that my work would be shared with others, providing informed information
I used to consider writing as tumble words from your mind, write, read it through, fix minor mistakes, and done. However, you rarely get successful. The truth is many students, including myself, struggle with starting to write a word, or getting stuck in the middle without knowing the main point of the writing. After completing English 101, I can explain the writing process, evaluate the strengths of my essay, and identify my weaknesses.
This year in our English 1010 class, we covered many different genres and types of writing. We covered how to write personal narratives, how to respond to other students and other forms of writing, and how to professionally write essays. Briefly, we touched down on how to write argumentatively and were also required to create an infographic, wish was probably my favorite assignment. Although I never thought of myself as a strong writer, I believe that this class has greatly improved not only my writing skills, but my thinking skills as well. This was my first English class to be taken through dual enrollment and I believe that it went quite successfully while challenging me as a writer.
My major, nursing, will require a great amount of communication skills. I believe English 1101 will help me further develop my communication skills. It is also very important to me to challenge myself and overcome obstacles to make myself a better writer. I found that high school English classes were moderately easy because there were no challenges set forth. I would rather take a class that makes me put forth hard work to earn a good grade and will teach me things I need to know to succeed, than a class I can get an easy A in that teaches me nothing. I hope one of the main principles I get from this class is how to become a better writer. I expect that this class will be a challenge and will teach me things I need to know to
When I took this English 101 class four months ago, I wanted to learn how to develop my writing skills and to communicate my thoughts clearly in writing using the English language. My parents are both French specking Cameroon, so I grew up in a French specking house. Before I assume everyone could understand what I was writing and I did not put too much effort to learn the technicalities of the English language.
When most people hear the term “writing”, they don’t really associate this with a single course that they have taken in high school or college. Rather, most people view “writing” as a process that evolves as we become capable of thinking in more abstract manners. The effectiveness of our writing is determined by our ability to think abstractly as well as how confident we are in our composition abilities. If we are lacking either of these two qualities, then the quality of our writing will suffer. I feel as if my writing has greatly improved after taking English 103.
Proficient writing is an essential skill in all aspects of academic and professional achievement. English 101, Introduction to Composition and Rhetoric, provided the framework to good writing, teaching me composition and rhetoric fundamentals, polishing up my grammar and style, and expressing a clear message. English 102, Composition, Rhetoric, and Research, continued to build on the skills I learned in English 101, focusing on the subject matter research process and employing various rhetorical and literary devices to better express a clear message to the reader. The course also improved my critical thinking capacity, allowing me to culturally evaluate my target audience, present logically flowing arguments using appropriate language and structure, and critically reviewing my writing projects for content and expression. Every writer inherently knows there’s always room to improve and I hold fast to this mindset in all academic, professional, and personal writing projects. English 102 has both challenged and inspired me to grow into a much better writer than before I began the class, providing the necessary skills to be not just a good writer, but a great writer.
I entered this class with a general idea of what was going to be expected of me and what I was going to have to accomplish in order to be successful, and I credit the extent of my preparation for this course to the extensive instruction and critiques provided for me by my high school teachers. By them I was taught the fundamentals of composition which allowed me the time and energy to more deeply understand the intricacies of good writing which I would be taught in college. Although I learned many new concepts in English 101, I feel as though I had a stable foundation to build on and enhance with more refined skills.
As writers, many students write to the expectations of their professors and not to their fullest potential. Throughout English 101 I had been writing only to please my professor or to fill the basic requirement to pass English. I always felt that my writing ability was never enough for my professors throughout the previous years. They always wanted clear and concise essays, which for some reason was unreachable by me. However, starting college and taking English 101 helped me with my weaknesses and changed my technique of writing essays. My experience in English 101 taught me to write to my fullest potential and to write what I felt; rather then writing what was required.
This semester was my very first semester as a college student. Being the first, it was probably the semester I would learn the most in. I learned the expectations for writing that I will have to live up to for the next four years of my college career. Though my high school teachers were usually demanding because I was in the Honors English section throughout high school, writing in college has still ?raised the bar? for me. Also, in high school, we would have weeks to pick a topic, create a thesis, outline the paper, write the paper, and then revise the paper. In college, the time restraints are not quite as lenient. I?ve had to learn to manage my time and be more productive with what free moments I
Throughout this semester in English 101, I have made a significant improvement on multiple things, including how to be an exceptional writer and thinker. English has always been one of my most favored subjects to study because to me it instructs students how to be intelligent, how to become a more creative and critical thinker, and be able to develop ethical values and imagination. You can express yourself more efficiently in English than you can in any other subject. This class has truly made me a more confident writer and helped me express myself in different ways through the different types of papers I wrote. By writing different types of papers I have improved multiple areas of my writing. I have grown as a student in diverse areas such
I am a science major and I have always minimized English Language courses because I thought I was already very good at writing. I did not think I would ever really need to use what I would acquire from such a course. When I came to Montgomery College and I was going to take the course English 101, my expectations were that I would have no difficulty scoring good grades in the course and I would learn nothing really helpful from it. This is because in high school, I put very little effort into my English class, but I had impressive scores in writing. I began to understand that I am not as good as I thought I was at writing when I started taking english courses in college. During my previous English course, English 102, I was able to improve certain aspects of my writing which I am glad for. For instance I am confident that my essay structures are well built. But some things in writing remained a challenge for me. I am glad that I am taking an English course that would permit me to work on things I thought I was already good at like awareness in writing essays and proper use of grammar and punctuation
English is a hard language to learn, for there are numerous elements of effective usage and writing. Many people, including me, struggle in writing because of a lack of knowledge. Since middle school, English was not a strong suit of mine. I struggled with the simplest of tasks often taking a considerably longer time to complete a task than the other students. Unmotivated teachers and a lack of interest resulted in remedial writing skills. To put it simply, I had little confidence in my writing and I dreaded taking the class because of the writing involved. In spite of my fears, I took the course and I was able to perfect and challenge my mediocre writing skills.
When I first started college I did not know what to expect with an English class. I liked writing about topics that interested me, but high school did not allow me to do that. I took American History and we would have to write