Reflection Paper

A semester has passed since I started college and my journey of becoming a better writer. It has been a very important semester for my future college career, and I would not be here without the things I have accomplished. The composition program has really helped me to prepare for what college writing is all about. Now standing here and looking back I could not imagine how it would be without that class. I believe my English, and my writing is better than it has ever been, and all thanks to the composition program.

Over the course of this semester I learned a lot about myself as a writer. This English 101 class has really allowed me to expand my essay structure and ways of thinking. This was my first college writing course and it has given me much more freedom when writing because in high school I felt limited and like what we were writing was not very important. In high school I would write essays to just to fulfill the required word or page count and to a degree I still feel like this but maybe that is why I am an engineering major but in this course I actually was able to express my ideas and for the first time really test the limits of my writing capabilities. I really enjoyed being able to incorporate my voice more in my essays and I believe

This year I have learned a lot from College Writing, this class has taught me a lot about my own writing and what makes a good essay. I have learned a lot about myself as a writer and as a person throughout the course. In this reflection of the past semester I will be going through my past papers and talk about what I liked and how I could’ve made them better. I will also be going through the activities that have shaped my writing the most. Hopefully, I will be representing how I have grown as a writer throughout the year because of this class. Before taking this class I was already relatively confident in my writing abilities and was excited to take the class. Now that the course is completed I am even more confident in my writing because of all the new techniques and helpful tips I learned.

I feel that I have improved my writing abilities during the course of this class. I am looking forward to applying the new found skills to future classes. One valuable tip I learned was to always read a paper out loud before turning it in. This has helped me to catch many errors. I had never thought of doing this prior to this class. It is an excellent tip because when you’re reading to yourself in your head you often miss errors. Once you read them out loud you can hear how things sound and will notice if something does not sound right. Putting the assignment away and coming back to it was also a great tip. I have found when I come back to an assignment I will notice a wrong word or punctuation that I hadn’t seen before. It also gives you a chance to really think on the topic and come up with more detail.

Writing in your class has been appropriately challenging so far. I feel like I am being pushed further as a writer, improving my skills so one day I’ll be able to use them. It has not been extremely easy for me to write stuff for your class, as some of the assignments are harder for me than others.

In this semester my achievement of improving my writing skills has increased significantly. My sentence lengths vary in a positive manner along with my word choice improving, becoming more complex and of writing expectation. My main struggle this semester would be the peer editing. Although I have improved significantly I still find it difficult to edit others papers. Further more than the common spelling and grammatical errors. I believe my essays have improved drastically from the beginning of the semester towards the end.

Over the semester the semester i have felt like i have grown in my reading and writing abilities. This class has been a great refresher for me and it has help me remember things that i have seen in years. I have never been a good writer, but after this class i feel a little more confident in my writing ability. I can now form better sentence and make my papers flow a little better.

I feel I have significantly improved on my aspects of punctuation in grammar; the progressions Leslie suggested to me on said aspects synchronized with the grammar lessons taught in my English Honors class. I also feel that my vocabulary has developed extensively throughout the course, as well as my structural and organizational skills in my writing pieces.

It was Mission Sunday at First Reformed Church, sitting in a pew with my youth group when I was given the opportunity to go to Eden, Jamaica the summer after my freshman year. My youth pastor, Ross, was standing on the stage in church describing the past trip that he went on with our high school youth group that past summer. He talked about the mission work they did, the relationships that were created, and the amazing views they saw. He then went on to say that the next group of kids that were the incoming freshman through seniors. That was me! I was so excited! I really wanted to go!

“The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life."” Upon hearing this my life was forever changed. I couldn’t understand or comprehend why God, God being all knowing and almighty, would have to make a bet with the devil in the book of Job. God began to lose me after this scripture, I had questions before, but this rocked my core and destroyed any doubt I had in my inquiry. It was in this moment I began on a path that would lead me away from Christianity and to Voodoo.

When I moved from South Korea to Miami, I expected there to be many differences. What I didn’t foresee was that there were also some similarities. I assumed that moving from South Korea back to the United States, would be akin to going home. However, I discovered that coming to Miami was comparable to adjusting to a foreign country all over again. Both South Korea and Miami are lovely places to visit. One of them, however, is also a marvelous place to live.

I was born and raised in a Christian home and our family would go to church every Sunday morning and go out to eat after the services. This is what we did and it always seemed normal to me growing up so I thought that was what everyone else did. As I grew up and learned more about the culture we live in, I learned quickly that going to church on Sundays was not the norm. Around the age of 7, I accepted Christ into my heart with my mom in my bed after she asked me if I believed in Jesus. I do not regret this decision but I had little knowledge of what I had just committed to and continued to grow up the way the average Christian child would be raised in a Christian home (going to Sunday service and Sunday school knowing the right answers).

When I was four years old, in the dining room of the house in Geneva my family was renting, I unleashed one of my historic temper tantrums. “Mom, no one talks in your dumb language!” I said, vowing to never speak it again. While my mother was upset I was insulting her native tongue, German, she understood my mindset. My experience growing up in different places meant my perception of the world wasn’t reflective of my ethnic background; while we travelled to Germany every year for the holidays, we had never lived there. At this point in my life, I treasure the fact that I grew up in a bilingual household with parents who were passionate about language, but my journey to this point has been a strange one.

Writing has always been something, that through my scores on papers, has been proven to be one of my strong suites in school. However, I think this class decided to burst that bubble. Who I am as a writing has changed quite a lot and for the better due to this class. There are elements to my writing that I do not think improved or could use more tidying up, but comparing my first paper to my last show’s that this class made a bigger impact on my abilities than I had anticipated. That aside, there were also many aspects of the class I did not enjoy. If I looked at the class with rose-colored lenses than all I would have taken away from the last nine weeks was a growing experience, but that is not fully the case. The class as a whole left me with major writing improvements, but there were also some parts to the class that were moreso tedious than helpful.

Growing up as a child it was confusing originating from a hispanic family in a country where English was the core language customs at home were foreign, very diverse in comparison to the American culture. As a cause of Spanish being my native tongue at the start of primary school I was put into ESL separated from the regular standardized classes. There were instances my childlike self would curse my luck from belonging to a totally different cultural background. Ir was frustrating and bothering beyond belief that learn wasn't coming to me as efficiently or smoothly as other students by grade level. Reading Comprehension, writing and speaking were always my core struggles in primary school, while other students had mastered reading their first chapter books I had yet to have mastered a simple picture book. While I struggled to understand simple history facts others had know it by heart since their parents were well educated and born into this country, making history a given for them in particular. Even asking for help was taunting for there was no help at home available for assistance, my parents would try but fail to help me comprehend what the teachers deemed me to be capable of learning being of little help since they themselves were foreign to the English Language . Throughout my elementary school begging older neighborhood kids for homework help” was my daily routine i was an only child back then. The one person who was always willing to help me out of all my neighbors was an older girl named Julia. Out of everyone in her grade she was the smartest the most intelligent it was always her who would accept coming straight after school to my house teaching, showing me how reading can be manageable tricks that always appeared to emit the fun side to every boring aspect. Julia became my role model from then on she was someone admirable, estimable at such a young age she was independent, and wise flr her age there wasn't an instant since knowing her that she has asked for help academically or on anything else in particular. Julia was the type of person who cared for others and selflessly helped anyone around her to the best of her abilities. My whole character formed around her in a way. Her personality and