Reflection Paper

When I first decided to expand my education, it had been so long since I had been to school, and I was very hesitant. I talked at length about my decision with my husband and with his encouragement, decided to enroll but still was not quite sure which degree program to enroll in. I knew that this was something that I had always wanted to do since I obtained my Associates Degree in Nursing, but I did not have the courage, nor did I want to give up the time with my family and children. I second guessed my abilities and my knowledge because it had been so long since I had been in college. Now that my children are about to graduate high school and

Throughout the course of this semester, I have continuously grown as a writer. Prior to taking this course, I had little experience or knowledge when it came to writing. I used to struggle with forming my thoughts into writing, let alone a paper. I was never confident with what I wrote. My writing had no greater purpose other than the assignment. My writing process included: writing my paper, proofreading it, and turning it in. Once the paper left my hands, it also left my mind. Throughout this course we worked with others, visited the writing lab, wrote critiques, and we were able to revise our papers. I believe that all of this is has caused me to grow greatly as a writer.

Over the course of this semester, I have learned many things to improve my writing. Having taken the course before, this semester has been an excellent opportunity to expand on my existing knowledge. Although I had written many essays before, there is still much to be learned and improved. Two factors of writing that I had learned or improved on this semester were transitions/topic sentences and how to properly structure a conclusion paragraph.

The writing technique that I need to improve on is my transition sentences to the next paragraph. I think it easier for me to start a new paragraph rather than end one

As a believer in Christ grows they become more aware of the gifts that they may have been given by the Holy Spirit. It is up to us to use the gifts for the right reasons. We are to allow God to work through us to edify the body of Christ. I see a lot of so called Christians these days using what is supposed to be a spiritual gift to use for ministry of the local church using them for self-edification. They are looking to see how much praise they can get instead of how much pleasure God will get through their service. We as believers need to be able to discern between what a spiritual gift is and what virtue is. A spiritual gift is related to the ministry of Christ and a virtue is related to our character. It is very easy for someone to blur the line between two and get confused. Our spiritual gifts are not the same for everyone, where all who believe should show the fruit of the spirit. To some believers the Holy Spirit gives the gift of serving, teaching, administration, and so on. But in the end it is not what spiritual gift we have but how we use it; this is what makes the difference between edifying the body of Christ or oneself.

I learned about the potential I have to keep growing as a writer. With every piece I write I improve. As I keep writing my essays will keep building stronger, as I learn from the mistakes that I consistently keep making. I still struggle in the areas of grammar, and sometimes punctuation. Knowing when to use commas, semicolons, or even period still confuse me.

My writing process have improved thank you to my English 100 level class at Arizona Western College. I feel more confident with my writing style. At the beginning of the class I was very confused with the writing process and the steps to make an essay. I had a difficult time developing an outline and putting together my ideas, so I was not able to write an essay with a good structure. In addition, my grammar was not the best, and some of my sentences were incomplete. During the class period I learned about grammar, how to write complete sentences, how to brainstorm and the importance of an outline. It has become easier for me to organize my ideas in order to develop a well-structured essay. An essay should contain a topic, one thesis,

Growing up, I identified as just African because I spent most of my childhood in Africa. Since getting back to the United States, I now identify as African-American. Though I believe I might be bisexual, I still classify myself as heterosexual.

Stubborn is how my Mom would describe my personality. My Dad, on the other hand, always said I was tenacious. He believed our greatest strength can be found by understanding our weaknesses. As a child, he explained that being stubborn is a negative attribute. According to him, people do not like when they meet an inflexible brick wall. Tenacity, on the other hand, can be a powerful tool. It shows people you are determined and persistent. He wanted me to understand that a strength can sometimes be a weakness made to work in our favor. I have always remembered this advice and have used tenacity to achieve many of my life goals.

Do you remember what your priorities were when you were eight years old? When I was that age (1965), I was in third grade. One of my jobs was to make breakfast on weekday mornings for some of my younger brothers and sisters. At that age, my primary goal was to figure out ways to get out of work around the house, so I could go outside and play with my cousins who lived in the neighborhood.

I learned some pretty strange things in my middle school sex education class. However, I’d consider myself lucky! My class was the only one to have a speaker come in to talk to us. He taught about one thing, and one thing only:

I was living in a apartment and had a bedroom in the basement. And so, my room was in the basement. One day, I had pulled 50lbs weight at work and so after I got home, I had issue breathing in my basement. In fact, I couldn't breath or yawn properly. It was weird, but it was getting better and so i went to bed. But I couldn't sleep due to breathing and I kept turning and tossing around. And so I started thinking about if I was rolling my back and crossing my arms the way vampire sleeps in the coffin. I started looking up at the ceiling, trying to sleep and then suddenly i felt like I was frozen still. I can not move my legs or hands. I tried everything to move my arms free but I felt like I was submerged in molasses. I began to panic every time I had those movement.

I visualized the entire process in my head: the light coming from the sun, getting trapped as heat because of greenhouse gases instead of leaving the earth and thus heating it. I started to raise my hand to answer the question and got about halfway before it happened. My hands started trembling. My throat dried up and my voice decided to take a vacation off to who-knows-where. I wanted to keep going, but the anxiety wouldn’t let me. Defeated, I put my hand down and let someone else answer the question. I had major speech anxiety.

Within my time in Child Protective Services, I had experienced a consistent amount of lying, which to me was a new experience. I was forced to adapt by listening to, two almost completely different stories, then pick out the similarities, and fill in the blanks. There were several times when a couple would lie for one another but have stories so far off that it was obvious neither were being truthful. We also had a family rehearse a story so that all of their stories did match one another’s but the injuries and marks were not consistent with the story at all. I do not tend to lie often because I found early on that honesty really is the best policy and I have always been my friend and families safe haven so no one has ever felt the need to lie to me as much as I experienced with CPS. I had to break my trusting habits and listen to everything as something that I will be investigating later to ensure it was the truth. In the training I was encouraged to read people or at least give it my best attempt. Investigator Samuel Nunez was extremely talented in this aspect and consistently quizzed me to ensure I was gaining the skill. There would be numerous actions one could do, or even different tones in their speech, or even switching their speaking patterns that he would be able to notice and predict why the change occurred. I found that when one is too trusting when investigating they would often look incompetent at the end of the case. Often times this is before a judge when one

There are so many things I can say about this class and why I enjoyed taking it very much. I would like to talk about how my experience in this class made me relate to history but I can only say so much in this paper, but here I will name a few. First thing I would like to say that I enjoyed our group presentations very much, from all of the groups. Second I would like to say that my favorite topic in this class was about WW2 and the battles and the history why exactly this war had started in the first place and how it ended. Also I want to talk about how the war opened windows of opportunity for women.