College Writing Reflection

Congratulations on getting accepted into High Point University! I remember when I got my acceptance letter and I was beyond ecstatic. After my excitement died down I quickly got very nervous. Being from Connecticut this was a long way from home and if I wanted to come home for a weekend I couldn’t just hop in car and drive for a few hours and be there. But I knew that I wouldn’t belong anywhere else except HPU and although this year was filled with a lot of homesickness, the experiences I had and the friends I made triumphed over that feeling. One of my biggest worries about coming to college was the amount of work I was going to have to do. Of course I was right about the workload but it was nothing a dedicated student couldn’t handle. The biggest changes first year college students have to deal with are the difference in writing essays. Fortunately I learned a couple of lessons that I am able to relay back to you. The first lesson I learned is the dramatic shift in the length of the essays we have to write. I’m not just talking about the length of the essay though; I’m talking about the length of the sentences as well as the words. I don’t know how it is for you in high school right now but for me

In high school we learned about the different citation formats such as MLA, APA, Chicago, etc. but within our papers the use of these formats weren’t something we really concerned ourselves about. In college citations are a whole other ball game. First of all if you use a source and you don’t cite it at the end of your document, you could possibly get expelled from school. It seems drastic but in college everything matters and stealing the words/ideas from others is a big deal and not taken lightly. While this of course seems very scary it’s really an easy problem to avoid. Just learn how to properly cite your sources and don’t forget to add your citation paper to your