Lonnie Jones

Cuddy

22 April 2019

English 102

Reflection Narrative Essay

This semester has been full of challenging and time consuming courses, but none of them were as

impactful as this one. During the first semester I took English 101 and frankly, I hoped this course was

nothing like that one. It just felt too simple and elementary. I didn’t feel challenged and I didn’t feel like I

learned anything. It just felt like I was lazily coasting through the semester and still passing with flying

colors. But gladly, this course was much different. Having English 102 has truly been an interesting time

this semester. On one hand, it taught me so much useful information that I had fun learning about.

However, on the other hand some of the topics and skills took me a while, or a few tries to understand and

get right. But no matter what, I appreciated the challenge. I appreciated the fact that I was learning new

techniques, concepts and skills that will realistically help me further along in my college career and life.

And most of all I appreciated the fact that I was learning these things in an interesting way that captivated

my attention.

Throughout the semester there were concepts and assignments that I had an easy time with and

there were concepts and assignments that I had trouble with. One of the assignments that I had an easier

time understanding and doing was the literary analysis assignment. Anything that is an analysis seems to

come easy to me because I enjoy voicing and writing about my own opinions and experiences. So writing

about the film, ​Moonlight​, and what I thought of it felt simple. Another assignment that came easy to me

was creating the infographics. Now I was surprised when I wasn’t having trouble with this concept

because I’m horrible with technology. But thankfully the website, piktochart, was simple enough to use

where I didn’t have any issues. But finding pictures and icons that correctly represented the statistics that
I chose to use was actually fun for me and when you enjoy doing something, most of the time it feels a lot

easier to do. I enjoyed making the infographics and finding new and unique ways to use pictures, charts

and icons portray the message I was trying to get across. But not all concepts came easy to me, there were

a few that took a bit more effort for me to understand. A concept that I had to spend a little bit more time

on was the research paper proposal. This assignment was frustrating for me because it seemed like it

would be so simple because it was short but I was struggling. I found it hard to find the middle ground

between giving too much information and not giving enough information. My first attempt at this

assignment I ended up with a condensed research paper instead of a proposal and had way too much

information. I also found the research paper it self challenging. It was hard trying to gather up useful and

relevant information from multiple different sources and incorporating it into one cohesive essay.

One of the biggest factors of difference between this semester’s English class and last

semester’s english class was the fact that I actually felt like I learned something and improved on myself

this semester. For example, this class helped me improve greatly on my citing skills. Before taking this

class I didn’t even know how to cite the correct way. I would just use easybib to cite all of my sources so

it was a very new experience for me to actually cite my sources myself and by hand instead of using an

automatic website. Another thing this class helped me improve on was my time management. Because the

peer critique days were the class before the actual project was due, I never found myself scrambling and

cramming hours of work into the night before a project was due. The last thing I felt like I improved on

was just overall staying on topic while writing. My complete and utter failure at creating a proposal my

first attempt forced me to take a step back and really try to learn and focus on the task at hand instead of

just drifting off into an actually essay. Through this experience I found myself staying more on topic in

my writing, especially in my research paper, because in high school I had issues with drifting off topic in

my writing.
 Unlike many other courses, this semester’s English class has given me many useful skills that

allow me to set future goals for my writing. One of the future goals that I had in mind is that I want to be

able to sit down and make my writing flow easier. This class has helped me to an extent, by helping me

stay on topic in my writing, but I still feel like I can have trouble making my writing flow at times.

Another goal that I set for myself is that I want to use more rhetorical devices and strategies in my

writing. I feel like that is the step that I need to take to bring my writing to the next level. Although I have

made large strides of improvement in this semester, my goals prove that I still have room for

improvement.