My First Semester of English Class: What has Writing About Driverless Cars Taught Me? With my first semester as a college student at Auburn University almost in the books, it has been quite an experience to say the least. I discovered what I what my major to be. I met lots of new people and made many friends. I learned how to work as a college student. I even learned how to stay up late and how to study (Calculus caused that to happen). My English class has also helped me in many ways. I have thoroughly enjoyed my first semester English class. English classes are usually something I dread. We are usually required to read page on page and answer questions that could easily go one way or another. Then we are required to write page after page of essays in the exact way a …show more content…
This type of essay was the only essay we really did throughout high school and that was with AP classes in both junior and senior year. We may have written one informational essay, but we certainly did not write a rhetorical essay. This has caused many of the essays that I have written and really this class in general to be a work in progress for me. A “learning as you go” mentality if you will. This has also made it really easy to see my progress. I have gotten better at using better and more complex word choice. My transitional phrases and paragraph structure has become much improved since the beginning of the semester although I feel that I have ways to go. I have also gotten significantly better at taking an idea and putting an entire essay around it. These essays have also been much longer than I am use to. Most essays were only one to three pages with five pages being a one-time thing, which also was a several month process in high school. So, this class has been very much compressed when comparing it to high school. Overall, I can say that my writing has become much improved when looking back at my high school writing
So far, I am only in my first semester of college, but I love it. I have met a whole new set of friends and find that things are always happening on campus and in the city. I was homesick for about the first week, but after that I never thought about being homesick again. I had too many interesting things to do. For the first t...
Happy New Year and the second semester of the school year. The first semester was a test on how students would blend into the new academics. Honors English was a great choice I made in middle school and I would recommend it to any incoming freshman. I have learned new ways to create claims and the proper way to set up paragraphs. Learning the way to set up paragraphs has improved my writing skills, even out of the english classroom. English comes in handy in the World Geography classroom as I have learned and may be useful in the future.
My first college English class was ENC 1101 at the State College of Florida. In this course, I learned a vast amount of information about writing, reading, and grammar. When I first walked into ENC 1101 in August, I expected the class to be like any other English class in High School; with rushed busy work and a lot of useless tests and quizzes. However, throughout each week of the semester, Professor Knutsen’s class made me beg to differ. This class was not like any other high school English class. In this class I actually learned important information and did not do work just to complete it. This class had a few assignments here and there, enough to maintain, in order to learn proper information. I learned a lot in this class because I was not rushed to
I had always been a strong writer in high school; I know how to form an argument and support it fully, but this did not prepare me for the writing at a college level. I expected to be reading long and boring books about topics that did not pertain to my life; as it turns out, this assumption was completely false. All of the three essays that we were required to read in class were fairly difficult to understand, but after a second reading, the essay's meaning became clearer. I also feel as though their messages and key ideas are captivating. I definitely thought they would be extremely dry and difficult to understand.
The first day of my junior year I was extremely overwhelmed by this class; all the essays we were required to write in the first week didn't help much either. However, since the beginning of the year I have learned so many useful and important lessons which have guided my learning throughout this first semester and, I'm assuming, will continue to guide me for the rest of my high school experience and beyond. In addition, I have made many goals which pertain to essays I have written, and I believe I have met those goals.
Weak skills that I began the class with have become strong and my strong skills have become stronger. Having the opportunity to write a variety of different essay styles has challenged me greatly to improve my writing techniques. Each essay I was required to write brought its own struggles for me. I had to draw on the information that was presented through the class as well as look to the textbook for guidance. To ensure I did well on each essay I thought about my topic, researched the topic, then began to outline what I wanted to write about. Finally, I would write the essay and submit a rough draft. English 102 has given me the skills and training I need to move on to other classes next semester that will require writing essays. I now have a confidence in my writing abilities that this class has given
Over the course of this semester I learned a lot about myself as a writer. This English 101 class has really allowed me to expand my essay structure and ways of thinking. This was my first college writing course and it has given me much more freedom when writing because in high school I felt limited and like what we were writing was not very important. In high school I would write essays to just to fulfill the required word or page count and to a degree I still feel like this but maybe that is why I am an engineering major but in this course I actually was able to express my ideas and for the first time really test the limits of my writing capabilities. I really enjoyed being able to incorporate my voice more in my essays and I believe that I developed my own personal style a bit from this. At the beginning of the semester my writing was quite choppy and there was plenty of room for improvement in the overall flow of my essays. Now, I use several different tactics such as outlining to create better connections between paragraphs. I believe I was able to move beyond many of the high school ways of writing and make general improvements to my essays.
In summary, I had an enjoyable time in my first college English class. I pushed myself as diligently as I could and learned much more than I thought I would. In addition to, my strengths grew stronger and my weaknesses improved as well. I acknowledge I still have some techniques and skills to work on; however, I am willing to put the time in and cannot wait to take English in the future. Writing is an everlasting skill that will be an enormous asset to me; in addition to my future classes, and my career as
This semester was my very first semester as a college student. Being the first, it was probably the semester I would learn the most in. I learned the expectations for writing that I will have to live up to for the next four years of my college career. Though my high school teachers were usually demanding because I was in the Honors English section throughout high school, writing in college has still ?raised the bar? for me. Also, in high school, we would have weeks to pick a topic, create a thesis, outline the paper, write the paper, and then revise the paper. In college, the time restraints are not quite as lenient. I?ve had to learn to manage my time and be more productive with what free moments I have. Strangely enough, I?ve found the college English experience to be much more rewarding and enjoyable than in high school.
I was never a person that liked to write essays. This semester I really enjoyed writing those essays and specially because I was learning new things while writing them. Some things I could do to improve my essay writing are not to wait till the last three or four days before I turn my essay in to start doing it. Another thing I will do is if I forget how to do something or about some rule in the common errors I made I will just go back to all the lessons I printed out to have as reference. I think those will help me allot. And one last thing I will do to improve my writing is to try my best not to confuse all those words I got confused. I will do my best to learn each word and its rule of where it goes so I won’t have the same mistakes I had this semester.
The most fulfilling or rewarding experience I have had as a college student here at USC has simply been having the opportunity to be surrounded by motivated students, professors, and advisors that have encouraged me to expand my horizons and better myself. Without the Honors College, I would have never met and bonded with my current roommates or any of my other college friends, who push me to try new things and work harder every day. The Honors classes I have been enrolled in have provided me with the opportunity to interact with students who are passionate about what they are studying. The professors I have taken are experts in their fields and have interesting stories and histories, such as one
To think that my first semester of college will be over this friday makes me realize how fast time flies. The first few weeks of college were tough, tiring and full of anxiety. Being in a new environment, a different state and not knowing one single person was something that I did not prepare myself for. Throughout all of the tears and the frustrations, I had to constantly remind myself that I am at The University of Akron to gain an education and become a successful individual.
Through the last 13 weeks I have learned about whom I am and what makes me who I am. I have made some great friends not only my age but also older and younger than me. I have realized many things about myself that I never would have realized if I wouldn’t have came here. College is a whole new experience that you could never imagine unless you are there. It is nothing like you read or even that you watch on TV. It is completely different and you learn a lot about yourself as a person.
Through this semester, I believe that this is the best class I ever take, but on the other hand, this is the worst class I ever take. The reason why I believe this is the best class for me is because I have improved my writing skills a lot through English 1A. For example, I have improved my pre-writing skills so I can write much more easily when I really start writing. Furthermore, professor and students in this class are really nice, so I have gotten a lot of helps from them; their helps motivate me to keep enhancing and improving myself. However, this is the worst class for me because English 1A is the most challenging class for me since I still have many writing weakness.
My first impression of college English was writing, writing and even more writing. Boy, was it true. I was afraid of going to college, especially afraid to take college English. This is my first semester in college and I knew I was taking a risk by enrolling into the online version of college English. My college advisor advised me of how intensive the workload is compared to the class done in the classroom. Nevertheless, I put on my big girl pants and enrolled. Though the class was tough, I learned so much than I thought was possible. I learned the importance of writing and I feel if I continue to work on my writing skills, it will make me a better writer in the future.