College English Class

As I look back into my high school years, I thought I wrote papers well. But then coming into a college environment, my papers were mediocre. By overlooking at my past papers, I found that they were unorganized, sloppy and had bad use of diction. From now on, I will use the tools I learned in English 1100-40 as a foundation for the future papers I intend on writing in college. Following the criteria of organizing ideas so that they flow, impacting the reader with diction and also by being creative, will help become an ideal writer. Following the criteria of staying motivated in short and long term goals, taking responsibility for actions and finally the ability to study well will help me develop into a supreme student.

With the anxiety flowing throughout my body, I knew the time was near of facing my English 1301 class. Being told that I needed to improve my writing during my grade school days, I knew that I didn’t feel at ease going into a college level English class. But, with this in mind I had to pull myself together to encounter the challenges that I will face. However, having the privilege of having an amazing professor I believe my writing skills improved, also I was able to find my confidence.

When I was in the second grade we had a new student in our class named Yvonne. Yvonne had recently arrived from Haiti and knew very little English. Due to the fact that she didn’t understand English a whole lot, the other kids in my class thought it would be funny to call her names and bully her. One day we were at electives. Our class was divided into two, some going to Dance others going to Drama. The doors were across from each other so we could see what was happening. I was in Dance, as well as Yvonne. We were practicing our routine for Ciara’s “1, 2 step”. Yvonne was quick to pick up the dance and was amazing at it, which I think made the other kids in our class resent her. Our instructor dismissed us 5 minutes early to pack up our things. I quickly went to my corner and grabbed my backpack. When I looked up I saw a bunch of girls surrounding Yvonne. I remember hearing them calling her names like ‘ugly’ and ‘loser’. I noticed that no one moved to defend her. One of the girls actually pushed her to the ground and took her backpack dumping all her things on the floor; that’s when I acted. I pushed my way through the girls and placed myself in front of Yvonne. I grabbed her backpack out of the girl’s hand pushed her and called her a ‘mean witch for making fun of Yvonne’. I also told the other girls that if they messed with Yvonne, they would have to

Before I enrolled in this Pacer English class I would generally study in my room, sitting on my bed, or I would sit at the kitchen table and study. I had a many advantages to doing this, because I would typically do it in the mornings, after my classes, when my husband was at work. I did have some disadvantages to this, because when I would sit in my bed to do my homework, I would get very restless or I would have cramps in my neck, causing me to want to quit studding for that time. When I would sit with my back against the head board and pillows all behind me I found that this made me feel more comfortable when I was sitting in my bed. The disadvantage to sitting at the kitchen table seemed more uncomfortable to me, because the chairs seemed hard after sitting there for quite some time. When I study, I try to sit for hours at a time to try and get all my work done at one time. I made sure that no matter where I was studying,

When I think of writing I think of peace and pressure all in one. I love writing when it's just me writing to myself releasing my frustration on to paper. I might write poems, letters, or just dairy entries but it's my peace filled moment. I start to think of writing as pressure when I thinking about writing anything anyone be sides myself will read. I have always pushed myself to do well in my writing courses yet I tend to fall short do to simple mistakes. I start to over think or over look simple things that make great impacts on my grades.

In English 9, I remember when my teacher would take attendance at the beginning, but he would ask us a certain question to get to know us. Although the questions never pertained to the lesson, it was conversation starter which allowed me to meet my peers without actually talking to them since I was new. Ultimately, I was ordained into Honors English 10, and it turns out, I knew people from my 9th grade class. If I’m being honest, I don’t like to remember 10th grade, but that teacher recommended me to take AP Lang, which then of course, turned into AP Lit. AP Lang’s collaborative work meant that it was an extremely interactive class. It felt like a family because we definitely got to work with everyone at least once. Each class encouraged me

The course definitely changed the way I approached writing a paper. One day in lecture you quoted Ernest Hemmingway saying, “The first draft of anything is shit.” This changed the way I approached and wrote papers. I used to start papers the night before, barely look over them and making few changes. This course encouraged me to outline, write a rough draft and constantly review then finalization the paper. Peer review before this class I though was pointless because most student hardly pay attention to the paper and usually wrote “good job.” The students in the class actually read my paper and gave honest feedback and ways to improve it. Also to have a teacher read your draft and give feedback with what is wrong and ways to help the quality of the paper helped greatly. This English class was definitely different than high school English.

I have learned a great deal about my self as a writer. That I have great potential to write at an advanced level if I can hone my grammar and organization skills. My mind if full of creative and out spoken ways to word certain topics, yet if no one can understand the sentence what use is my writing? I also learned I love writing memorable to the point conclusions as I spent the most time in all of my essays figuring out a witty way to end each with a way of clarity. I also learned how to correct my sentence fragments, how to use commas, and stopping my usage of contractions and “ing” verbs. All these problems I struggled with while in high school, yet teachers simply corrected them and told me to edit in the corrections. I came into college with the rhetorical and critical skills of writing, yet lacked the grammatical abilities to capture A's on my paper.

There are many languages around the world. Nobody can control where they are going to be born. People even cannot choose what language they spoke. People cannot choose their mother language. Everybody can decide which language to speak as a second languages. No one wants to leave home where they grew up and had friends. This is a very difficult decision for people. Unfortunately, there are many situations that force people to immigrate to other countries including religion, economics, and political situations. When people move to a new country, it is necessary to adapt to live. First of all, they need to speak the language of the country where they moved to. Our family decided to immigrate from Russia to the USA because of the Communist government.

On the first day of English class, I aspired that I was going to be a great writer. As Loren Eiseley says in her poem, “The Snout” “It began with a strangled gasping for air” (Eiseley). College English came at an unbelievable speed. The material I learned from high school didn’t match up to the information I was about to encounter. To me the class felt like a dream that I have to pass to move on into a better place. But, ever since the class, I have acquired knowledge and developed many new skills in English like how to transform my mediocre essay, into a proper use of accurate punctuations, great transitions and detailed paragraphs.

“Welcome Class to Composition one.” Those words were voiced by my professor, Mrs. Robinson, on the first day of school. Initially, I thought to myself, do I even belong in this college course class. Before school had even begun, the stress over the summer about my English skills was eating me alive. Why? Well, in my past English classes I received A’s on all of my essays, but this college class did not seem so easy. Also, I was always fascinated by all the arts and sciences, but English never struck interest in me. I never thought that I could write any decent essays. The reason I insecure about my writing skills was because of the ACT. Since the ACT is the talk about how smart an individual is, my ACT score was not very high. As the course continued, the first essay approached quickly. I remember being stressed about this essay because of my writing insecurities. Although I managed to acquire a decent grade, I promised myself to strive to make myself a better writer. I started to read Norton Field Guide to Writing handbook also known as the yellow book, and slowly but surely started to develop knowledge of good writing skills and tips to improve my essays. This allowed me to grow as a writer and slowly my insecurities started to dwindle, and I began to gain confidence in myself. I never would've thought that the next time I took the ACT that my English score would be my highest. When getting my score back and realizing that I had improved so much, I began to wonder how I

In high school, I would always get the highest score in my class when we would write essays. Naturally, I adopted a sense of confidence where I would not spend a lot of time writing and still expect a good grade. However, in the first paper I wrote in COLWRIT R1A, I followed my same routine effortlessly dedicate about one hour to write the essay. When the grade came back for this assignment, I was given my first B in a long time. Bewildered, I made a bunch of excuses in an attempt to justify this B, and claimed that it was because “Berkeley has higher standards than my high school, but I am still a great writer. I will just start dedicating more time to writing my essays.” However, as the semester continued, it seemed as if I could not get an A on any of my papers that I had submitted even though I worked on it for a long time. After a deep reflection, I realized that I have been missing more as a writer than I had thought. There was so much more that I can improve when writing my essays. For example, this semester I learned that my thesis has to be narrow, that it is acceptable to deviate from the five paragraph structure, and to use questions as a tool to help me develop an interesting thesis.

"I have not failed. I 've just found ten thousand ways that won 't work," Thomas A. Edison must have known what he was talking about, right? These words have been inspiration for many people over many years, including myself, at least since I began my first writing course. I have come to wonder if I have become a decent writer or just a less awful one. Going through past essays, both final drafts and rough drafts, I have come to realize how awful I actually was and how much I have improve. Despite this improvements, I still have distinct mechanical errors I need to keep working on. Nevertheless, my ability to research, and my sense of responsibility have improved as well since this is one of the few classes that demands me to progressively work on assignments during the semester, reminding me as well the fact that college does not come cheap whether in terms of money, time, or effort.

Writing is a major part of college courses. Most courses will require you to write a paper to pass the course. Writing has not always been something that I have excelled in. I was never a good writer from the start. This paper is to show where I have struggled in the past, currently and where I improved in my writing. It will explain where I got help in years previous to Neumann University along with my first semester at Neumann University. This will include grammar, word choice, using resources from the local library and correctly citing them. I will also explain how my one class in my high school graded my whole paper wrong for using “I” and how I used that information in my classes now to improve on that and not let it happen in the future.

My entire highschool career English was taught incredibly different from how public schools teach the subject. Most of the time our classes would include group projects, powerpoints, and reading in and out of class. Throughout the four years we rarely ever worked on writing and how to properly formulate a paper. There was no instruction on how to draft or how often we are to revise our papers. I didn’t learn how to write argumentative, persuasive, or informative essays. We also were never taught how to properly cite sources, include quotations, and the difference between MLA and APA. College was a shock to me, my first ever college paper was APA and I had no clue what APA format even was. It was so intimidating that I dropped the course. Through the classes I have taken at COC I had a general idea of how to write but nothing near what I have learned in this class. Coming into this course my skills were dull and I was eager to learn. I have always really enjoyed writing, and one day I want to write a book. Throughout this semester I feel as if I’ve really grown in my writing skills. After two years at COC I finally feel prepared enough to move on to receive my bachelors.