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Jethel Adasa

Professor Batty

English 101

11 December 2019

Reflective Essay

This semester has been a journey for me. Even if I learned a lot in high school, it seems

like I am starting my first semester in college as a newborn child who doesn’t know anything and

innocent to the world. I never expected that all throughout this semester, I’ve seen myself

improve and manage a college-level course and actually survived it. Before this semester started,

I always question myself if will I be able to surpass and manage this course, and surprisingly I

did, and this wouldn’t be possible without an amazing professor and the support of the Puente

Club. In this semester, I learned so much than I expected from this course- from the importance

of MLA format, what is a thesis, how to properly integrate quotes or quote sandwich, analyzing

rhetorical techniques and the reading journal.

In the first few weeks of this course, the step by step process of creating the Latinx

Students essay was one of the most helpful and effective ways of making my essay. Those six or

seven Homeworks definitely helped me construct and organize my essay. I consider it the best

way to start the semester because coming from a two-month summer break, I haven’t practiced

and read books.

I learned about how to create a strong thesis and a good counter-argument. Back in high

school, I didn’t know what a thesis meant and where to place it on an essay. I am incredibly

fortunate because in this semester, we tackled and lectured several times about a thesis and a
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good counter-argument which help me understand it thoroughly and now I can apply it not just

on my English course, but also to different classes that I will be taking. I didn’t realize how

important conducting a good thesis is until it connects and sums up the entire essay that I made.

One of the most amazing parts of this semester is reading Thi Bu’s graphic novel. This is

special in my part because I realized that those graphic novels are not just a picture, it tells a deep

story and analyzation. I am not a fan of a graphic novel, but Thi Bui’s ​The Best We Could Do

taught me different lessons in life such as lack of identity, racism, the importance of the family.

We also read different types of stories of Mukherjee, Rodriguez, Anzaldua, and Pitts. These

stories not just only taught me a diverse story that gave me a different perspective but also

improved my reading ability. Through the help of these stories, I am now more engaged in

reading books. In addition, without the reading journal contributed a lot of my engagement in

reading books, analyzing, annotating and critically think.

All of these wouldn’t be possible without going through a lot of ups and downs in this

course. Even if I struggled and encountered topics and essays that I thought I wouldn’t do well, I

am beyond grateful to say that this course, as well as the English 072, guided me to all the

knowledge that I learned throughout this journey. I am still craving for new information and new

things that I don’t know and I am looking forward to the next semester so that I could apply and

use the lessons I learned in this course.