The frog, which made it out of the well

Upon entering Columbia College, writing was one of my weaker areas. It was very important that I gained the necessary knowledge and confidence to become a better writer. I didn’t know how to express myself and felt as though my writing was not my interest. As a result of taking English 101, I have gained a better understanding on how to properly research and build a satisfactory paper. Every paper that was assigned seemed like a struggle to complete. Before entering this class, I did not know the meaning of a thesis or why it was important, however, I obtained this skill quickly. I noticed that every paper has an argument and the thesis helps clarify the rebuttal. Now, I have a new outlook on writing. It’s a way to express my thoughts and allow others to see things through my eyes. There is no doubt that I still have a long way to go, but I know if I continue to write, I will get better. Just as I developed more skills in class, the various papers assigned helped to better structure the writer in me. In addition, the subject areas were not only interesting, but very informative and made it much easier to write about my experiences.

Like transforming from a caterpillar to a butterfly, my writing style transformed from something mediocre to something quite exceptional. In high school, even when I took advanced placement English and Literature courses, I was never good at writing. My writing would lack structure, reasoning, syntax, and a well-defined thesis statement. My inadequate grades on writing assignments lowered my self-esteem, so I assumed I would never enjoy writing papers because I believed I could never improve. However, since attending a university my writing style has improved far beyond my expectation. My EN 101 course enhanced my understanding of the different ways I could approach my writing. Also, it enhanced my comprehension of outlines to complete assignments. Investing quality time into my writing made a substantial difference because I became a stronger writer. Through the late nights, constant revisions, and agonizing head traumas, I learned that my writing is truly spectacular whenever I incorporate well-defined thesis statements, provide sufficient supporting evidence, and maintain a clear focus in my assignments.

In high school I was not the best at writing. I did not find this out until I was places in advanced English. I was used to writing papers that had to be simple. So when I started receiving C’s and D’s I told myself something had to change. I finally realized that I could not write as well as most of my classmates. So, what I ended up doing was making my papers more complex and making my sentences stronger. When I applied myself I became a stronger writer. As I took the diagnostic test I saw I was making a lot of mistakes. At the end I made a 70. From this I could see why I encountered the bad experiences in high school and in college.

I immensely struggled when writing. Taking my scrambled thoughts and uncoordinated analysis and converting it into clean and understandable words on a page was arduous. I could not express my thoughts in proper academic format. I understood the importance of writing to every subject. It was essential that I learn to condense my ideas and feeling into coherent written word. After much debate, I decided that the best way to improve my writing skills was to take an advanced English course.

Research types of writings at college helped me strengthen my writing skills because as I started to research on a topic, not only I learned more in depth, but also learned how to draw further connections outside of the course(class). I want to improve my writings in making correct connections and organizing ideas. Sometimes, I misunderstand the readings and end up making the wrong connections. In fact, my ideas are all over the place whenever I try to make connections, which does not clearly show that I have understood the assignment. These mistakes often led to downside of my grades. The most useful advice I received that helped me improve my writing is that “the word ‘writing’ actually means to put things together, so don’t be afraid of express your opinions in your writing your opinion.” This encourage me not to be afraid of writing and expressing my opinions.

It is a common occurrence for high school students in their senior year to experience declines in motivation and performance; most call it ‘senioritis.’ When students contract seniorits they become lax, neglecting their homework, turning in late papers, and generally losing effort. The majority of seniors continue on to graduate, only to receive a rude awakening once they enter college. While students may be able to graduate from high school without putting in too much hard work, college is indisputably a different story. In the documentary,”The Expos 5,” five college students provided a first hand look into how they learned to navigate the difficulties of expository writing. I related best to Arpan and Yasmeen, but I learned great lessons from all of the students.

My high school years were not spectacular, nor were they terribly productive.I left high school without learning how to proficiently write an essay. However, CUNY's Borough of Manhattan Community College afforded me a desperately needed second chance. It was at BMCC that I sharpened many of the skills I should have mastered in high school. I was able to greatly improve my writing ability. I began college as a student who found writing a 2 page paper to be a terrifyingly daunting task, but due to practice and numerous resources offered by CUNY, I soon was able to compose papers consisting of 10-14 pages with confidence and efficiency.

During my English courses throughout high school, I learned many things from writing simple journals, research papers, and a single term paper. During high school, I was laid back and procrastinated for much of my work. During the latter part of high school when I wrote my term paper my senior year, I found out that working a little every night writing a few paragraphs helped me out greatly. I was not just throwing something together just to get the grade and the paper finished. I spent time on the paper and

From elementary school to high school, I was taught that my writing had to be structured and follow strict criteria. After I arrived in Mr. Mukherjee’s ENG 102 class, I was given the opportunity to express my creative freedom through words and graphical pictures. It can often be difficult and challenging to improve upon my own writing abilities unless motived with an idea in mind. When looking back on my time at ASU, I thought about the goals that I wanted to address for myself and the course goals that my instructor had set for the class. These goals include ones that I had accomplished to the best of my ability and ones that I need to address as well as improve.

One major disadvantage of not writing a lot in high school was that there was no re-writing of anything. Very rarely did I have to write more than one draft of a paper. Now I understand why some papers can go through 7 or 8 drafts before being complete. There is so much more time and research that goes into writing a paper that I had never thought about before this class. Learning how to analyze the works of others and form my own opinions in order to write my own paper was a great learning experience of how to include myself in the conversation of a topic. Something that I still struggle with is incorporating the right questions in my paper as well as portraying my own ideas clearly to the reader.

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.

As I look back on all of the papers that I wrote during high school, I remember all of the stress that I endured. I remember struggling with writing

During the course of this semester; the variety of writing styles and essays assigned to me in my communication skills class encouraged the development of my writing skills, as well as provided me with more self-assurance in my abilities. My writing, research, and presentation abilities enhanced through practice, determination, and the understanding I gained during this course. With every single writing assignment, I learned new innovative approaches and skills, which enhanced my abilities to improve my thoughts logically, enabling me to write more clearly, and to organize my papers more effectively. At the beginning of this semester; despite the fact that I already knew the terminology MAP: message, audience, purpose; I never really

Once again, Marian’s English department has taught me how to do that. During grade school, I had to write essays and give reports, but I never really went beyond what the rubric wanted, especially with the essays. I had a formula that I followed on every essay, and although I always got an A, I never appreciated how important good writing was until sophomore year when we had to write our research papers. At the start of the paper, every paragraph I wrote was closer to flowery prose than academic writing, but with the help of Miss Royal, I was able to transform it into academic writing that focused on informational content rather than flowery prose-like writing. During the last two years, I have had to integrate my ability to write academically with my ability to write critically. Beyond that, my ability to communicate verbally has also been improved by the English department. Although I have always been good at public speaking and never been afraid of it, the many oral reports I have given have greatly improved my style of presentation. In particular, the quarterly book reports we did with Miss Royal enabled me to refine my style to be focused more on the meaning of the book, not just the characters and plot. The ability to write and speak well will inevitably be

Since beginning to write papers in English class, I have had countless successes and failures. While many of my English classes have taught me how to improve my writing, I have not learned very much in others. My most recent English class was last year, my sophomore year. My class was particularly undersized; therefore, it gave each student the opportunity to have additional individual attention. Throughout the class I experienced high points, weaknesses, and even difficulties that I never overcame. Overall, my writing skills improved, but only marginally.