Angelo Alamia  

Prof. RoseAnn  

December 2, 2022  

Course Reflection   

Reflection   

Before this course, my initial attitude toward writing was not positive or negative. I had just started taking writing seriously by journaling my days from start to finish to improve my memory. That allowed me to separate writing as purely academic into something that can be done creatively for enjoyment. Before I started journaling, I saw writing as a daunting, impossible literary task. As I continued to journal, it opened my creative writing space. I finally did not need an essay prompt to write, and I was doing it on my own, without the influence of a teacher.  

As I entered my first college English course, I was taken aback at how I was given similar prompts that I was getting in high school but now with a higher expectation of the final product. I realized my half-assed attempts at writing would not come close to cutting it. The issue was I needed more confidence in my writing ability. I needed to learn how to draft a proper essay. As I thought about how to tackle my first college-level essay, I tried to think about what I had done in the past. I just started writing what I thought. I did not make a solid plan, just a rough draft that I turned into a final draft, written in one shot, and continually edited until I had my final product. It was a mess until I went back and did a revision. There were grammatical errors, run-on sentences, and a feeble structure overall to the essay. This was not an essay I could look at with pride. It took me sitting down with my paper for a few hours, reading it over and over, and rewriting a good portion of it to have an essay I was proud of. It was an incredible feeling having a piece that I was proud of, as I had never written at that level before. I finally had pride in my writing and the knowledge that I could do it.  

Since this new writing journey began, my attitude and writing process has changed drastically. I am much more optimistic about the writing process and now have a fundamental strategy. I create a rough draft with ideas, assigning each idea or group of ideas to a paragraph. After that, I build up the piece’s word choices, run-on sentences, grammatical errors, and overall flow by adding information, fixing grammatical errors as I go through, and finally re-reading and ordering the structure of my essay in the best way possible. After that, I make revisions until I am proud of my work. Out of my last three papers for this English class, I am most proud of my first essay. It started off feeble, but after working on the word choices, run-on sentences, grammatical errors, and overall flow, it became something I could be proud of. When I continue to do revisions, I need to focus on adding more details and building on my points for strength and clarity while also balancing conciseness. As I continue onto the next chapter of my English education and reflect on my work, I can see areas I have improved and need to work on. In terms of strengths, I have improved dramatically in organizing my information and developing thoughts and ideas. The biggest thing I need to improve on in the future is grammar. Even since elementary school, grammar has always been the most challenging part of writing for me. It was one of the most significant factors for my disliking writing until I started writing for fun, without regard for the rules. Being able to do a creative free write at the beginning of the class has been a fun and helpful way to expand outward creatively and not worry about grammar or capitalization. Creative writing helps me engage in the course at the beginning and become more invested in the lessons.  

As I progress through the school year, I enjoy English more, as I am learning necessary writing skills, I never thought I would have known. I can structure a rough draft, turn it into a full essay, add details coherently, and revise. I needed to be more confident writing at the beginning of the year. Being in my current English course taught me what I need to improve, allowed me to refine my existing writing skills, and helped me build confidence in the writing process. Moving on to the next writing class would be beneficial to push my writing skills even further and grow even distant from the feelings of apprehension that used to surround writing. As I continue to grow as a writer, I am excited to learn new skills and tactics in writing to be more expressive on paper.