Final Reflection over the Course

Leah Robinson

Joan Dudley

Comp 1

8 Dec 2024

Final Reflection over the Course

This semester was not easy. Being my first semester of college, I went in optimistic and hopeful. I knew that as long as I stayed focused, I would be fine. Thankfully, I remained optimistic throughout the months. Of course there were times where the optimism tried to slip away, but given my natural optimistic nature, I was always able to reel it back in. English appeared to me as my easiest class at first glance, given that I love to talk and write, however, it posed some issues.

I find it very easy to write essays once I find my flow. In order to find my flow though, I have to take time to sit with the assignment and let it speak to me. This (first) step is where the issues arise. Balancing work, the gym, and school was harder than I thought. Once I finished work and the gym, I was exhausted and found it hard to focus on schoolwork. This led to me being overstimulated once taking a look at the work due and once I become overstimulated I'm even less likely to focus. In times where I became overwhelmed by my workload, I would take time to go on a walk for some fresh air to ground myself and return with a clear head. I also found the weekends easier to sit at my desk and really pay attention to what I had to do and this helped tremendously as well as talking to myself about the assignments and reading them aloud so I fully processed it. My phone also posed a threat to my attention span, of course, so I decided to put my twiddling thumbs to work by typing the essay into the docs app on my phone and revising on my computer. 

While revising, I realized that I often would lose my grammatical aspect in drafts. While I do love to talk and write, my audience in English class is a lot different than usual. Talking to friends lacks punctuation and oftentimes involves words that don’t actually exist. I had to remember that I am writing for my teacher and not my peers. Which meant I had to adhere to grammatical standards. This was an easy fix, surprisingly, my twiddling thumbs didn’t mind.

My brain has habits of straying away which at times can be helpful to my work. Once I’m passionate about a topic, I have a lot of things to say. In our first essay, I wrote about the effects of burnout in the healthcare system. That is something I’m passionate about, being a healthcare worker myself, so I naturally had many things to say about that experience. Being a woman raised by and around women, the Barbie movie review was a lovely assignment for me. My connection to the Barbie movie is something I can and have talked forever about. I found both of those assignments to be the easiest for me. While I love art, I found it hard to find my passion In my argumentative research paper. I believe this is because, once again, I started off overwhelmed. This paper needed three reliable sources, which was new. Two of my sources were lengthy, so it involved a lot of reading, which I don’t usually mind. However, these articles were about AI and how it uses algorithms to create art. Being that my argument was against AI art, I was not interested while reading the articles. I found ways to incorporate them all into my paper and made points to highlight parts I found interesting which helped my inspiration tons. 

My creativity really flourished when it came to creating my blog. I found that adding an artistic aspect to my assignments motivated me even more. I couldn’t wait to post things on my blog and see how it flowed together. Creating a blog and organizing it made me feel as if I had more of a connection to my work. Taking them from a simple google doc and giving them life by showing the process was entertaining. 

The format was another fear of mine. I had never used MLA 9 and it seemed complicated at first glance. After watching the videos, I found it was very simple. I began by writing my essays’ in the original format of the google doc and transitioning it to MLA 9 once I was finished writing. This way I had the word count correct and I was more focused on what I was writing instead of whether it’s formatted right. Thankfully, the Pulaski Tech library has a citation feature, so I didn’t have to worry about whether I was citing correctly or not on my “Works Cited” page. 

This course has been a ride that I am grateful for. To be able to write pieces that I am passionate about and give them life is delightful. I was able to learn to further expand the quality of my essays’ by creating a strong thesis and stronger introductions and conclusions. Before this class, I had a habit of making my thesis statement a question, so I'm thankful for that important change as well. While I encountered issues, I have learned from them and they have helped me improve my writing skills tremendously.