Hello future students, I am Guilherme, I attended Professor’s Garcia English class for the Fall 2020 and I would like to share my experience. ENG 1121 was 100% online and we had weekly instructions and assignments to complete. It was a different experience from the traditional in-person classes but it doesn’t mean it was an easy class. From some of the material, Frederick Douglass’ speech for Independence day in 1852 was one of the readings that stuck with me the most because of his background and because it was a much different time than today. Certainly a mind expanding reading. Unit 1 assignment was to write about a problem affecting one of my discourse communities and John Swales’ writing was incredibly interesting in explaining what discourse communities are. Completing the assignment had an added personal value since the problem that I wrote about was created due to the pandemic. Unit 3 was one of the assignments I had the most doubts about completing and I struggled a bit but in the end I realized that I was the one who made the assignment seem complicated. It was a very fun assignment where you can let your creative and artistic side run loose.  

Being an online student had its pros and cons but it was a positive experience overall. For me, not commuting was great but being constantly in my home and not having contact with other fellow students was hard to cope. One advice I would like to give to you is to be on top of your weekly posts and take the time to go over the instructions before the actual day the activity is due. Usually the instructions for the weekly assignments will be posted by Friday night so you can get ahead and have it completed early so you can concentrate your energy in other tasks you might have. Or you could go over it and have extra time to think about what you need to write about. Another advice is try to complete the work on time and do not let it accumulate because each assignment is connected to the next to build up your thoughts and major assignments.

In conclusion, this class has helped me to improve my critical thinking, reading, writing and researching skills. It gave me an opportunity to research information about topics that interest me, devise solutions and even think about areas related to my future profession that I might enjoy exploring. I suggest you take this class because you will be happy you did at the end.

Sincerely, 

Guilherme