Jamie

Padgett
ENGL 1102
Raymond
4/22/14
Reflection to the Instructor

Over this semester I wrote many papers and many entries, but overall I

believe my best entry was the short-research essay about pain and anxiety
medications in dentistry. This one was by best because it was the most interesting
paper I wrote all semester, and when I am interested in something I do better.

As a writer, this portfolio shows how I have progressed over the semester as

a writer and as a student. In the beginning I did all of my daily writing prompts by
hand, not staying organized at all. By the end of the semester I kept all of my daily
writings together and organized on my laptop. Not only did my organizational skills
improve, but also my skills in writing. I learned how to properly do research and cite
things correctly. The things I learned this semester will help me with whatever I do
in life, using those hard research skills.

One of the main things I learned about in this course is about my family.

Through the family tree project I learned a lot about my immediate family and my
distant family as well. It really opened my eyes to the rich culture that belongs to
our family and how our family was formed.

My main weakness in my writing at the beginning of the semester was that I

did not know how to use MLA format to save my life. Over the course of the
semester I learned the proper ways to cite sources and use MLA format. This one

skill may be the different between and A on a paper, and an F and expulsion for
plagiarism.

Overall, this course has been very important to me and has taught me a lot

about the essentials of writing. It gave me a back to basics review of how to write
and do research, which is reality was a desperate need of mine. I feel like I have
grown as a writing tremendously and that I have learned valuable lessons in this
course.