Entering college felt weird, it’s this big thing everyone talks about, and when you’re finally in it, it’s just odd. First semester’s done, and here I am, still standing. It’s a strange feeling. English was always my strong suit, but being here made me realize there’s always more to learn, room to grow. The college level stuff I got hit with really shaped how I see myself as a reader and writer. It’s not just about reading anymore. Now, every time I look at a text, I’m not just seeing it as a reader. I’m thinking like a writer, trying to get a message across to someone else with just words on paper. It’s a weird shift, but it’s necessary if you want to expand your knowledge basis . I learned about some important historical people in my classes, and it’s how they opened my eyes to different ways of thinking about reading and writing. Being good at both is very important. College made me realize literacy isn’t just about reading words on a page. It’s this thought that shapes ideas and cultures. It’s about decoding words, but also about getting what’s really going on between the lines, the hidden meanings. Each piece of reading I tackled, whether it’s an old classic or something modern, became a chance to sharpen my thinking skills. Critical thinking, breaking stuff down, and putting my ideas on paper, those became my weapons of choice. after this first semester I’m not just better at this English I’m seeing language as this tool that lets you explore emotions, ideas, and different viewpoints. It’s more than just what the teacher tells you to read; it’s about understanding why someone would write this notion. when i first began reading i used to hate the idea of books, it always seemed so stupid to me that someone could sit for hours and hallucinate in their heads about something, but i realized the books we read are not to imagine or create scenarios in our heads, but so that when we go out into the world we can turn the words we read into reality, it gives us the power to spread ideas and to turn words into actions. something that was particularly difficult for me to understand at first was the concept of impoverished literacy, which in other words means how someone explaining how there is this feedback loop where by being in poverty we don’t learn to read and because we don’t learn to read we end up literate, and that idea couldn’t make sense to me because where I’m from we were always in poverty yet everyone could read, books were interwoven into my societies culture and its odd to see that in a different part of the world that books are not readily accessible and if it was, it was criminalized or deemed as wrong such as in the case of Fredrick Douglas. words have this powerful ability to make you reflect on your own life, as in my case it took me back to my childhood where i was unable to speak in english, and in a way speaking and writing are one of the same things, being unable to speak is like being illiterate, unable to share your ideas and concerns, its a deadly feeling to have, because as humans we are social creatures and conveying ideas is our number one thing, its what makes us human, i learned english very quickly, i was practically forced to, and i learned it not from my teachers or tutors but from the children around me, it gave me this idea that one does not develop a set of skills from wanting but from needing, and as an adult now, i realized i need to learn how to read and write in english better if i ever want to expand in life and reach further, from my first major assignment i learned how to convey emotions ” To them, my words simply translated to “I can speak Russian.”” this feeling of misrepresentation can be relatable to a large amount of people. for my second major assignment, i learned that in order to offer a thought provoking change, i don’t force my ideas on people but allow their own curiosity to do the work for me “why has the FDA seemingly fallen short of fulfilling its regulatory duties effectively?” and for my third final assignment i used everything i knew and put it together “is the FDA unregulated, why is american food banned all over the world” my time in this class has helped develop my understanding of the english language and how to better convey my ideas across the world to spread my message as efficiently as i can