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Edith Barcenas
Professor Rust
English 100s
03 December 2015
Reflection
Before attending this Composition class, I was afraid and nervous. I knew my writing
skills weren’t good; my writing sucked and to top it off, it was not college level writing. Just by
the thought that I had to write an essay was enough for me to feel overwhelmed at all times. It
frightened me that the person reading my essay would criticize my writing; thus, criticizing me
in the process. Anxiety would kick in each time there were in class- timed essays or out of class
essays assigned. I always struggled with essays… one of my greatest weaknesses; nevertheless,
everything began to change as I began to write essays throughout this course.
When it came to writing an essay in Week One, I freaked out. I thought: This is the
moment where I can prove myself to the professor; make the professor have a good idea of my
writing and prove that I am actually good when it comes to writing. I wanted to impress my
professor with my writing although I knew my writing was not the best as a college student. In
fact, I will always struggle with writing thesis statements, leads, and with organizing my
thoughts and putting them on paper in a way that will make my essay flow. Moreover, as I
looked back to and revised Week One’s essay, I’ve realized that I’ve learned so much through
out this course.
I am proud to say that my writing skills have improved by taking this course. I now feel
confident, comfortable, and relaxed when it comes to writing essays. The class discussions,
lectures, and assigned reading has helped me develop strategies and techniques that I will now
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use and include in my writing. It has become easier for me to organize my thoughts and ideas in
a logically manner to make my writing understandable. For instance, when revising my first
assigned writing assignment, I’ve noticed that I did not provide a strong thesis statement and that
my organization was not well planned out. I reread my paper and a bunch of ideas came to mind
to make it better and stronger. I found myself changing the whole organization of the essay,
where I included a lead, along with a strong thesis statement. I had organized my writing in a
way that it flowed smoothly and where I got my ideas across to the reader. The reason why I
changed these areas of my paper was because I like to think of organization and the thesis
statement as the heart of a paper. If you have a strong thesis and a well thought out outline then
you have a strong heart, which you can wrap with ideas; in other words, you have the start of a
strong paper with well thought out organization and ideas.
Going back to fix my errors of my first writing assignment has not only made my paper
stronger; but also, it has also made my writing stronger. Revising this paper made me realize that
I have learned how to catch my mistakes and fix them. Of course, I am no expert in writing
essays; but I have gained skills from this course that has made my writing grow. This was proven
when my professor mentioned that I had the highest grade in the class. The moment I heard him
say that made me acknowledge that my writing was indeed improving; nevertheless, it was such
an honor to have him say that. As mentioned before, writing was always overwhelming for me
and hearing that made me fell confident and comfortable with my writing.
Moreover, I want to take this moment to thank and appreciate my professor because he
may not know this, but thanks to him I have become a better writer. In addition, I am able to see
my errors and fix them. Thanks to my professor I have become a college level writer. I have
become able to write essays without having trouble writing my leads, thesis statements, and have
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a better understanding in how to organize my writing in a way that will flow and be
understandable to the reader. I have indeed learned and experienced great ways that helped my
writing dramatically, to the point where I had the highest grade in the class. Taking this course
will be something memorable, for it was filled with surprises; such as, getting my writing to be
college level in such a short time. In addition, earning the highest grade in the class. I will no
longer have anxiety, and get overwhelmed when writing essays.