Personal Narrative: My Dual Enrollment Student

I am a non-traditional student. I began my college matriculation 15 years after receiving my high school diploma. I started my family before focusing on my education and career. I have been fortunate within that 15 year gap to be a stay-at-home mother. When my youngest son began kindergarten, I began college classes. This reversal of traditional education and family construction has given me a unique perspective on life.

I am amazed at how the reading assignments in this class interest me. I gave up my leisure reading in order to have the time to attend this school, and I find myself losing my self in this reading, just like my "fun" books.

I am dual enrolled at Macomb Community College, earning 22-23 transferable college credits. I have a job and work quite a bit. My mom is a single mother of four children with no child support. This has forced me to grow up a lot faster than I should have. I essentially support myself financially which has made it tough past few years but I would not trade it for anything.

During these past three weeks I have realized that college is going to be very challenging, it is not what I expected it to be like. This class has helped with my reading and writing experience and has contributed to my understanding of expectations for college and goals for my future. It has helped me with preparing and planning my work ahead of time. Dr. Sariscany has helped me with becoming a better writer and helped me prepare for college level work. She has showed me that college is not going to be easy and we should get used to it and put in all our effort and time into everything we turn in.

There are many different kinds of genres, such as romance, comedy,suspense and mystery. If you really enjoy mystery and suspense books because there is a cliff hanger after every chapter, and it keeps wanting the reader to read more. Found the novel by Harlan Coben, and the last book of the Mickey Bolitar series was very exciting and also very suspenseful for many reasons, such as setting, point of view, and the conflict.

I briefly skimmed through the course syllabus and I am very excited about what we are going to learn from this course. I expect this course to help me improve my critical reading, analysis and research

I prefer to read fantasy, mystery, science fiction, and horror genres. I like books that I can relate to. Modern stories or older stories with a modern twist are fun to read and figure out what all was changed from the original story.

I developed a relationship with my professors by making appointments when I need help or sending emails. Just like your daughter spoke with the TA’s I do went to my TA’s for assistance but it was never very often. I would rather interact with the professor instead of the TA. As for the staff, I worked in the financial aid office at my institution which made it super easy to understand my financial aid. The admissions office is also in the same building so whenever I had a question I would just walk-in and ask. I never had a problem seeing my academic advisor, because I always made a point of actually communicating with him or her. The reason I had no issues attending a large institution and developed a good relationship with my professors

The initial path that really influenced my decision to go to medical school was learning about autopsies while taking Anatomy and Physiology in high school. From that course, I learned about how doctors must be detectives in order to come up with the right diagnosis. This was very interesting to me and I decided that is what I want to do for a career.

I will not be satisfied with becoming a number. I was, and I will remain, deeply devoted to my academic career and service to the community. My academic success was founded by an honors program, known as OMNI, in my elementary school. As a transfer student, I was not eligible for the program. Hearing the stories of OMNI students motivated me to want to participate. Unfortunately, academic success has never been simple for me, and my B average grades did not meet the requirements. I began to push myself academically, as getting into the program became my number one priority. I am surprised my parents didn’t take me to a psychologist. I was probably the most stressed-out third grader in school. For the first time, I became deeply motivated to achieve academic excellence.

At the end of last year I signed up for this class because I love reading. I go through phases where I read a lot for a period of time and then there are times where I go for months without reading and this class fell into the phase of reading all the time. I’ve learned a lot while in this class, most of it being able to recognize literary devices like: personification and onomatopoeias.

Ever since I was a child, my favorite type of books to read were novels. I was never really fond of picture books and moved onto chapter books as soon as I could get my hands on them. I specifically enjoy fiction novels. Supernatural (not fantasy), realistic, action, drama, and comedy are my favorite genres. What attracts me to fiction is the way fictional stories challenge my imagination. Fiction stretches my mind to create new worlds, meet non-existent people, and entertain previously unfathomable situations. I enjoy writing fiction in order to further elaborate on the experiences that reading fiction has given me.

After taking this course I still do not necessarily enjoy reading novels, poetry, or non fiction, however; I do see these writings in a new light. I have a deeper

Before taking this class I thought that my reading skills were exceptional, but I was undeniably wrong about that. Now, after taking this class I can say that my reading skills have greatly improved. I now know how to analyze works of art and find new meanings behind the words that I read. Now, with the knowledge on how to use criticism to my advantage, all types of literature will become wide open to me in a sense that I will be able to understand literature in greater detail.

At the beginning of the semester, I can honestly say I had no idea what to expect with this class. All I knew was that I had to take one of the possible three choices to go towards my Education English Minor. For quite a few years now I have begun to read more than I ever had in my life. Growing up as a child I never wanted to read, unless it was with my grandmother, and even then, I had to be in a specific mood. Still, even though I have been reading, I can promise you they are not any highly-prized novels; most of them are all romance novels. Because of these experiences, and after entering the classroom and finding out what novels we would be reading, I became a little nervous. My reader experiences before this class had been very