Breadth In College

Approaching this class, I thought I knew more about writing. It turns out, there were lessons I had yet to learn. I learned a lot more than I had expected. This class taught me the importance of time management, in-depth research, and more. It’s hard to realize what kind of an impact one single class has on an entire field of learning. But making connections with people who are doing the things I want to do in the future, has shown me how important this and every class is.

I learned a lot in this class during the semester. The first project was our learning narrative, it was not what I was expecting from a writing class. I expected we would be writing a many formal essays in MLA format with lots of sources and research. The first essay being a creative writing project was unexpected. At first writing a narrative from my personal experience was difficult for me. I had not written anything besides formal essays since high school. Writing something that was creative and expressive was an adjustment. After a few days of writing I began to really enjoy my learning narrative. I liked being able to express myself and my own experiences and share them with others.

There are many benefits to getting a Liberal Arts degree in today’s economic market. It is a message to your employer that you are willing to take on new information, and learn more then what is necessary to succeed. It shows initiative and the ability to expand your horizons beyond yourself. In a Liberal Arts education there is more purpose then just learning the career field of choice. It is a program that teaches critical thinking and self-thought. It teaches the student how to learn and teach themselves, to achieve more than just memorization of facts.

- I encourage students to share their varied perspectives and experiences & create a supportive environment in which this can occur

Throughout the semester, I wrote about topics that I thought were interesting to me or about something I like to do. I wrote about hunting, baseball, fishing, and Pearl Jam. I liked writing about these topics because they all were fun to write about because I knew some of it already, but I also learned a lot about them. Such when Pearl Jam played certain shows, or when the Cardinals won their first World Series.

This is where the students from West View reflect on their experiences for the day. I was able to help out numerous students with their spelling and grammar. My favorite part of the day was being able to connect the activity to why college is important. After journal, it was time to take them back to their bus. We said our goodbyes and are patiently waiting for our next activity.

Also, within this class I learned that I had a creative side in me which I didn't know existed. From coming up with lesson plans to ways to organize things to creating thoughtful gifts for the students and teacher, I had to use my innovative imagination.

It was my first writing class as a college freshmen and I did not know what to expect, like whether or not the class would be harder compared to what I took in high school or even if I would enjoy taking class. But as soon as day one turned in into week one, than soon week fifteen I felt more comfortable in the class than what I have probably felt in the beginning. I felt like I could write anything my professor threw at me, because through writing I could express my individuality. It gives me the freedom to express myself through words, and write about things I felt passionate about writing about. I felt as though I writing because I wanted to, and less because I was assigned to do so.

A big concern in todays’ world for graduating college students is being able to find a job right out of school. More times than not, there are many problems that occur when a student chooses a specific career path. In the short exert “Why Focusing Too Narrowly In College Could Backfire”, written by Peter Cappelli, he discusses in his opinion, as well as many others, the right path students should be taking. The lead way students should be following to secure they get a job in a field they will enjoy. Many students have trouble picking a college to go to let alone what major they want to focus on. Students are told to pick a major and start taking the classes for it as soon as possible without realizing they might not even enjoy that field of work. There are many struggles in college with picking the correct classes and

Caleb Stone and Oliver Mitchell are those students. This year, I’ve also done better with the support of Madison Bieth and Jessica Waelens as well. Caleb and Oliver were emotional support and always gave me ideas that helped me with my creativity that has influenced me for how I continue to do. Madison worked with me as well like Oliver had done in the past and we expressed our hard work on our pages. Being able to collaborate and share things has made this class less stressful and means a lot.

I do personally think that they should put more diverse culture at colleges and have them have several different cultures and for them to have more things that not everyone would hear of on campus. I was at Peru recently and I had seen that there wasn’t that many different cultures on campus but that could have been because we were there the week after they went back to school. One thing that I could see is that they do need to have some type of diversity in there campus. I had seen that SCC has a lot of diversity on campus. Peru just needs to have more diversity. The college applications do need to have some type of question to ask them what type of race they have but they don’t need to be rude about it. They just need to have diversity, they

I have truly enjoyed writing for most of my life and after this class I will continue to enjoy writing hopefully with more skill. I have always viewed myself as a fairly strong writer and this class has reaffirmed that for me, but it has also shown weaknesses in my writing. As an introduction level class this has been one of my favorites; at some point I will take a higher level, even though it is not required for my major. Even though this class is almost over I am continuing to learn. I also love that this class will help me with literally ever other class in my college career. I am not a particularly strong reader, but as my writing skills improve so do the reading skills. While in this class I have learned a lot about everything from what I can improve, to subjects that interest me, and constructing a successful paper.

First, I have over eight years of professional experience as a supplemental instructor/ tutor at HCC and BMCC. In this capacity, I gained valuable insights from my students and work, including simplified instruction to complex questions and importance of providing constructive and specific feedback on written work.

“…As for all the seniors, I want you to challenge yourselves this year and don’t think you’re going to cruise through to graduation.”-Mrs. Smith, County High School. Although some seniors in high school refuse to take a hard schedule, I decided to take a challenging composition course my last year of high school and learned more than ever before from it. My teacher, Mr. Bacz, focused mostly on vocabulary, grammar, and how to right an essay. Each one of these subjects combined to give me a year of hard work, which eventually paid off.

I like writing in-depth learning journals, because looking back on learning journals point out material I find especially interesting.