Fortuna 1

David Fortuna
Professor Jerri A. Harwell
ENGL 1010-004 (Final Reflection)
11 December 2015

A Creative and Clever Title

Growing up, I read a lot. I read the works of Charles Dickens and Jules Verne, to
Rudyard Kipling, to more modern authors, like J. R. R. Tolkien. From them, I learned to write
descriptively. They taught me how to tell a story. I thought I could write very well.
Apparently, I thought wrong. While I could write creatively, I was not as skilled in the
ways of academic writing. In fact, I knew next to nothing about it. I did not know that I was not
supposed to use contractions, like shouldnt, cant, and wouldnt. I did not understand
how to double-space a paper, either. That was the state I was in when I first began this class.
To be honest, I began English 1010 feeling a little overconfident. The class ended up
being harder than I had anticipated, not because I could not handle the workload, but because I
could not get used to the technicalities of it. I found myself frequently researching proper
formatting and/or being docked points on assignments due to my many mistakes in said
formatting.
My struggle to cope with a new writing style lasted the majority of the semester, not to
say that I have mastered it. Only recently have I started to feel more comfortable writing
academically. I still have much to learn, but I have come a long way.
I am very glad that I took this class. I have learned to analyze literature more critically. I
learned how to be more thorough in presenting evidence. I feel much more comfortable in

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presenting my arguments and opinions in a written form. I even learned a style of writing that is
completely new to me! I have also come to appreciate, much to my personal delight, that I will
never understand everything, and that there is always more to learn. Not only am I more
confident in myself, my writing, my college life, and my future, but I am also compelled to
discover more. Who knows? Perhaps someday I will learn how to develop my own creative and
clever titles without staring at a blank page for half an hour and settling for the first ironic words
that come to mind.