Omar Ambriz

November 30, 2014

English 100 STACC
Professor Tyberg
Getting the Hang

Coming into English 100 STACC I was expecting packets to work on my

grammar, sentence structure, etc. I thought this class would be boring and pretty
tedious like every other typical English class where teachers would just throw loads
of work on their students. The class really surprised me when we got down to
business and started writing essays about novels we read in class, having
discussions about our essays and the novels, and posting on Canvas about quotes we
could relate to. Most of the material we covered in class was something that I was
able to relate to. For example, in The Freedom Writers Diary, I was able to relate to
this one particular story where this individual had to cross the border from Mexico
in hopes for a better education and future. Anyways, the semester is coming to and
end and Im glad I can say that I have improved from the start of the semester to
now.
In high school, my greatest weakness was my English class. I wasnt a very
strong writer because I never understood grammar, syntax, and the different
writing styles. For example, during my freshman year, we started off learning about
Shakespeare, which was pretty difficult for me because this was like level 1000 in
English when I was barely at level 80. In my freshman English class, we started off

going all in rather than started small and progressing to something big. Right off the
bat we started reading and writing texts from great authors such as Shakespeare to
philosophical authors such as Plato and Socrates. It made me nervous when it came
to writing about these topics/authors because it seemed like something so advanced
that I couldnt write about. I felt like I didnt have the capability to do this kind of
writing especially because I didnt have teachers that were thorough with explaining
what we were supposed to write about. My teachers never said it, but I always had
the impression that they thought I was a bad writer and student because I hardly
ever did very good in my writing assignments. Then senior year came and teachers
were constantly saying that high school work was nothing compared to the work we
would be assigned in college.
At the start of my first semester in college, some of the first assignments in
my English class included reading, analyzing, and reflecting on articles. The articles
we covered were mostly about writing styles such as free-writing. When I found out
we were going to start free-writing journals I got sort of iffy about it because I
wasnt much of a good writer to begin with. I didnt want to start my semester off
leaving professors with an impression that I wasnt a good writer or simply that I
wasnt a good student overall. However, once I got the hang of the class, I realized
that my professor and peers were very interactive and helpful. I felt like I had all the
time and help that I needed when I got stuck on what to write or whether or not
what I was writing about was good enough or not. I might have not started my have
started off the semester strong, but I think thats what helped me because I got all
the input I needed on what was good or bad to add or change. The difference

between writing in high school and writing in college is that my high school teachers
and peers werent as cooperative as they are in college. In high school, I could have
written something terribly and my peers would never give me an honest
opinion/input and my essays never came out to be its best.
As my first college semester in English progressed I felt like I improved more
than ever in my writing. We started getting into novels such as The Freedom
Writers Diary and reflecting on these diary entries was a sort of difficult to begin
with, but I got the hang of it. I felt like my thoughts/ideas flowed much easier
because in class we shared our ideas with each other more often than I shared in
high school. In high school my teachers just gave u writing assignments and told us
when it was due. I liked the idea that in English 100 I was ably to share my ideas and
get other opinions and ideas from my other classmates. Towards the end of the
semester we covered The Madonnas of Echo Park. For this novel, we had to write an
analytical essay and I felt like this essay was one of my strongest.
Throughout the semester Ive had a few bad essays and a couple of pretty
good ones too. I think my weakest essay would probably have to be My Writing
Adventures, which was about my writing career throughout my education because
it wasnt as organized and thought out as it couldve been. My thought/ideas werent
very clear and they seemed sort of randomly placed throughout the essay. The
assignment also called for a reflection to some of the articles we read in class and I
felt like I didnt concentrate enough on what was asked of from the prompt. On the
other hand, I felt like my strongest essay would have to be my analytical essay on
The Madonnas of Echo Park. My research and ideas were clearly thought out and

discussed throughout the essay. However, there were also parts where they seemed
biased because there werent counterarguments for some ideas. I feel like this essay
demonstrated a lot of strength because I was able to get all the input I needed from
my professor and peers and actually include them in my essay.
I hope that next semester I will be able to incorporate the input and opinions
I received this semester in some of the essays we will be writing. My goal is to
improve on generating more sophisticated ideas, using better grammar and syntax,
and only being biased in my essays when appropriate. I think that to be less biased
in my essays I would have to include more counterarguments, which I can get from
some peers in my class. Overall, this semester has been very helpful because my
professor went by slowly with the assignments and was very thorough in his
prompts and my peers helped me in every way they could.