Jordan De La Rans

English 1101

Coming into this class in the second semester it was kind of nerve wracking. I was never the greatest writer in school, and I would always put myself down because I never thought my writing was any good. So, coming into this class I was very anxious because I didn’t know how well I’ll be able to do in the writing assignments we were going to be given. Now that we are finally at the end of the semester, I can say my writing has definitely improved over the course of this semester. Before this writing class I never cared for writing or how it turned out, I’ve always just wanted to get the assignment out the way so I wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore. As this class took its course, I’ve learned a lot that like annotating, revising my work, learning about genres of writing, and also learning how to write to an audience.  The 3 major Unit assignments of this class have made me a better writer and has made me appreciate writing more because you get the opportunity to connect to the readers and maybe even teach the readers something they never knew before. As we come to the end of the semester, I wanted to revise my Unit assignments.

In the beginning of the semester Unit 1 was about education narrative. We had to write about what event impacted us on the way we view education/school. For this assignment I wrote about my relationship with a former teacher of mine that helped me build my confidence in school to the point where I am now in college. I point out the benefits of having a teacher who helps out their students and wants to see them succeed unlike some teachers. Most teachers don’t care for their students and just want to move on with their day and that shows how there’s a problem with our education system in today’s world. As I revised this Unit 1, I noticed how there are still some grammatical errors, not constructed as well as I wanted it to be. The feedback I got from Professor Cole was that I had a few grammatical errors, no title, no name or date on the paper, well developed in a clear and effective style but not structured well, writing is fluid and engaging. I never incorporated what Professor Cole said because I never thought about the small stuff and tried to make the best it could be, but the small things make it better and now I know that.

After Unit 1 we started to work on Unit 2 which was Reflective Annotated Bibliography. I wrote about how films make people better. During this unit 2 I got to learn a lot about films and how they impact us and our society. As I revise this assignment, I noticed grammatical errors, 2 articles. I didn’t answer all the points that I was supposed. The feedback I got from Professor Cole were the same things that I mentioned. I have fixed the grammatical errors but not the other things because I wasn’t able to find another source that wasn’t an article.

For Unit 3 if I could revise It if I had time. I would pick a different genre because I don’t think I did too well on this Unit because I struggled trying get my message across in a specific genre. I think I could’ve done a better job in this project. I think there are a few grammatical errors Aswell which I need to start paying attention to more often.

Final Reflection

This semester I’ve learned a lot about myself and about writing. In my time capsule I wrote ” Hey Jordan, I am writing this for the future. I hope your starting to find out what you want to do in life. I know you feel a lot of pressure on you at times but always remember you got this you can put anything you set your mind to. You’re finally at the end of your first college year and I hope you completed some of your goals that are passing all of your classes and also learn how to become a better writer. I hope you stopped bringing yourself down in certain situations because if you put your mind towards anything you will always prevail.” Now that I’m at the end of my first college year I still haven’t figured out what I want to be but I’m getting into photography and film so maybe that can take me somewhere. I’m not putting as much pressure on myself now and I’m feeling better than ever. And lastly, I think I have improved as a writer, and I think you can see that in my work this semester.

This semester I’ve learned as a reader, writer and a scholar. This term I learned about being a reader, writer, and a scholar. As a reader this term I learned that it helps you a lot with vocabulary and could help you in the real world with speech. You can learn a lot from reading for example this semester I learned that schools are killing students’ curiosity. Teachers would tell these young students to not ask any questions which kills their curiosity. These questions help me understand the topic more but not allowing them to ask them these questions won’t help them understand. This shows how you can learn many things from reading that you didn’t know before. You can really find a connection with the author, and I never realized that before it makes me more intrigued in whatever I’m reading. That connection makes want to read more and feel more connected to what I’m reading.  As a writer this term I’ve learned a lot.  I learned that it is very important to check your work to see if it sounds good or to even check grammatical errors. Before I learned this, I would never go over my work and check my work but now I understand how important it is to do it. At times I will still struggle to look back at my work to make it perfect but It’s going to be a habit I need get used. But I think the most important thing I learned as a writer that you can write anything thing down when you have writers block because it’s better to write anything instead of writing nothing. It helped me a lot when I was having trouble doing these projects, I would just write anything that came to mind to help me get rid of that writer’s block. As a scholar this year I’ve learned a lot and I’m beyond grateful for it. One thing I learned is time management it’s something you need to be good at it if not you are going to have a hard time during the school year. Not only did time management help me with schoolwork it helped me a lot with my job and my personal life. Time management is something everyone needs to learn. I also learned now in college never to procrastinate or it’s just going to harder for yourself in the long run. Always try to make everything easier for yourself.

We got to do a lot of assignments this semester and most of them were very interesting assignments that I’d never had done before. One of my favorites was definitely the Unit 2 RAB. This project was my favorite because it got me to research about a topic I was interested in and that was films. I learned many things about films like how they impact our society in positive and negative ways. I also got to learn the deeper meanings in some movies. I really enjoyed researching this topic and finding out more about it and also getting to write about made it even better because I got to write up something really dear to me. Especially when I got to write up what happened in Pakistan it shows how cruel this world is and people need to know. My least favorite project was Unit 3 because I just didn’t have fun doing it at all. Especially with the genre part I had a hard time choosing it and understanding how to make my project an exact genre. It wasn’t as interesting as the other assignments.

While doing all these assignments throughout the course of this class I learned a few notable lessons. Some notable lessons I learned from completing some of these assignments is that I’m not the only one that messes up when writing professional writers mess up all the time. I liked learning how some these writers have trouble because it made me feel better about messing up in my writing and how the best to mess up too. I also learned how important it is to make sure my writing flows perfectly for the reader so they can understand my writing. I never want to confuse my readers with my reading ever or make them less interested. One last notable lesson I learned is that never slack off when writing you will never be proud of the work you do once you start slacking off.

This semester has gone well but came along with many challenges. The biggest challenge I had this semester was making sure my writing made sense and wasn’t all over the place. What helped me was doing the RAB in parts instead of doing it all at once. It helped me focus on one thing at once and make sure I put all my focus on part and then move onto the next and put my all focus into that part, I think I got over this problem, but I don’t think I’ve perfected it which I’ll be continuing to work on. All of the work we’ve received this semester challenged me as a writer and as a scholar, but it has made me better as both as time passed. I will continue to challenge myself as a writer and as a scholar.