I began this school year with very little college essay writing experience and that was something I was not constantly thinking of. When I first started my English 11000 class, the assignments that were given seemed relatively clear and easy to follow, which caused me to not take the class too seriously. I guess you could say I was arrogant because I went back to my high school habits of working on assignments last minute and expecting to get a good grade out of them. In the beginning, my first few assignments showed good scores but over the course of the semester my grade for the class started dropping. As I began piecing things together, I realized I was not forming good writing habits, such as having my first draft end up being the final draft. Later, this led me to getting a D in my class. I took the mistakes I made from the first semester and started my second semester in English 21001 with a fresh mindset where I assured myself that I would put more effort into my work. After initially being given the Op-Ed assignment, I went straight home and began doing online research for my topic, which was covering the rat population in New York City. During the interim between the announcement of the Op-Ed and the due date, I had formed 3 drafts and also visited the writing center for edits. These are actions I had taken that allowed me to help reach my full potential of writing a good Op-Ed, as well as other assignments. Due to this, I was able to revise my work multiple times allowing it to improve with each revision. This led to me receiving a B on that paper in comparison to the D that I received on my first paper when I started college. From that moment on, I pushed to form a habit of producing at least two drafts and having my work peer reviewed before it gets submitted.

This semester allowed us to dive into the different core parts that made up writing in Humanities, whether it was sitting in groups discussing our reactions towards certains works or learning to maintain and support our thesis in our writing. Personally, I enjoyed being able to deeply explore more unique genres and writing styles such as Ecopoetry and movie reviews whereas, other classes I have taken only gave brief overviews of the different genres. Each individual assignment that led up to our four main writing assignments had taught us all to think critically, but to also analyze small details and be able to use them to support our ideas. After attending the class, I was able to improve on my editing skills but also teach myself to aim for certain writing goals.

I took past experience from my previous English class along with the tutorial that was made for us when creating my digital portfolio for my English 21001 class. The website first begins with my Self Assessment which discusses the road I followed when I wrote out each of my essays along with the steps I took in between when I was assigned small tasks. It later leads on to the next three essays that I worked on which all cover various topics that I wanted to look into throughout the semester.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jSjVz2sAJaXDThDLCLW2kexEBDV7vaI4JFQkDxGdO1s/edit?usp=sharing

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