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Follrod 1 Zachery Follrod Professor Robert Arnold English 1103-022 16 December 2011 Portfolio Reflection Most of the writing

I have done this year in all my class has been quite different then in high school. In high school I only really had to write one paper in all of my four years and that was for the senior project. It had to be 5-8 pages in length, but we had forever to work on it. I worked on it a little bit everyday and had it done in no time. It was then that I realized that maybe writing a paper wasnt that hard after all. I was selected to be in English 1103. This is a class that combines 1101 and 1102 all in one course. I was happy because English was never my strongest subject and that this one class would be my only English I would ever have to take in college because I am a nursing major. I always heard that college English was harder then high school because of the volume of papers you would have to write. We had to write two four-page papers and two reflection letters. Even though I went through some bumps along the road, I felt like they were not that hard because I just tried to put down on paper what was going on in my head. Out of all the papers we had to write in this class, the most difficult paper was the ethnography. I wrote mine on drunken

Follrod 2 fans at ball games but it was hard to get four pages just off of that. I found interesting facts and stats that helped me explain myself thoroughly. In the past I used to dread writing a paper by setting it off to the last night I could do it. In writing so many papers so far in college I noticed that it is easier if you do your paper as soon as you can and to not procrastinate. I had so much work that if I held off my paper till the very last minute then there was chances that they would run into the same night I had a test or another assignment. I decided to start doing my papers on my own schedule and to work on them when I had any free time. This helped me out on the stress of test anxiety and other stressful events a vigorous college schedule can bring you. Formal writing always gave me trouble, even in middle school. We used to have to take a test called the writing test. We were told that it had to be five paragraphs. I never understood why something had to be five paragraphs if you felt it was necessary to make it more or less paragraphs. The one in the 7th grade I failed the test with a 2. I was told that I couldnt make a three without exactly five paragraphs. When I walked into English class, you mentioned that the fiveparagraph rule was no longed in affect. In fact you were strongly against ever having five paragraphs. Looking back to this class I notice that I learned way more then I actually realized. I can now write a four-page paper in about 45

Follrod 3 minutes. It would used to take me around two hours and it would be painful. Now I can sit down in a quite place and knock out the paper pretty quick. I feel as if I did a decent job writing in this class. Even though I wouldnt say that I am a great writer, I am working my best to become a better writer. In future classes I plan on using all of the writing techniques I learned in this class. It taught me how to expand on the things that I needed to expand on and condense on things I needed to condense. I learned how to express myself and exactly how to get it from my mind to the paper.

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