Reflection Paper

When I reflect back on this class, I’m grateful for what I’ve learned. I can’t imagine starting the online college experience with a different class. I imagine what that would have been like, and I can’t help but think, it would have been rough and I wouldn’t have some of the basic resources needed. APA formatting, I didn’t have the slightest idea what that meant. Learning the basics on APA will ensure I have a great skill moving forward to write my papers during college. Citing properly, although I’m still working on this, I would have been even further behind. If I didn’t have this as my

Through taking the course, I learned to utilizes sources in a more efficient way. In writing my analytical essay of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly I had to use ten sources. All the

Throughout the course of this semester, I have continuously grown as a writer. Prior to taking this course, I had little experience or knowledge when it came to writing. I used to struggle with forming my thoughts into writing, let alone a paper. I was never confident with what I wrote. My writing had no greater purpose other than the assignment. My writing process included: writing my paper, proofreading it, and turning it in. Once the paper left my hands, it also left my mind. Throughout this course we worked with others, visited the writing lab, wrote critiques, and we were able to revise our papers. I believe that all of this is has caused me to grow greatly as a writer.

Carrie Fisher once proclaimed, “Stay afraid but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually, the confidence will follow.” I had to learn the hard way that confidence does not show up ready for you to utilize, just as the quote says. You have to put yourself out there and the confidence will develop. In the seventh grade, I joined the beginner band and chose to play the flute. Beginning band was far more terrifying than my twelve-year-old self imagined it to be. I learned that each student would have to perform in front of the class for a weekly grade. Even worse, the one other flute player next to me had already been playing for a year and I constantly compared myself to her. Later in that semester, this girl and I were talking and she said to me, “When we first started, I thought you were going to be the worst player in the band!” I was completely baffled that this girl, who had only been playing for a few more months than I had, would have the audacity to say that to my face. I did not understand that, at the time, it was okay for me to not play as well as she could. I had only been playing for a few weeks at most after all. Twelve year old me took it to heart and I felt like I was two inches tall. Sadly, that was not the last negative interaction I had with that girl. She stayed with me all throughout middle school, where she made fun of me for making last chair in eighth grade, and overall, put my

Looking back at my previous essays I wrote for this course makes me to understand the progress I have made during this semester. This course helped to develop my comprehensive writing ability. However most importantly through this course, I experienced different kinds of essay writing and is able to advance my critical thinking skills. It is clear to me though I have to work more on my grammar and need to give more time to develop my MLA format reference writing. Throughout this semester I saw myself developing as a good writer. Now I can easily identify a problem, organize my thoughts, outline my paper and write it. I am also able to easily find errors and apply the proper correction efficiently.

I took this class knowing it would challenge me and more than likely get on my nerves--which it did--but I do not regret taking the course. I have learned writing skills beyond the write, revise, and finalize that comes with every paper written. This class taught me how to write with purpose and revise to make the purpose clear.

By the time the world considered me to be an adult, I had an unshakable competitive spirit traceable back to as early as my junior high school days, if not before.

During my first few years in the United States, my family was constantly moving between New York and Florida because my dad was searching for long-term employment. My family resided in a basement during our two year stay in Staten Island, New York. Living in a basement was very tough because there was no natural light and the space was very cramped for a family of five. Living in a basement was also tough during the winter because basements are often poorly insulated, which kept the basement quite cold during the winter. My family later moved to Florida for a couple of years after living in New York and we have resided in Orlando, Florida for about twenty years now. I started school in Florida at the age of five and when I first attended elementary school, I was in ESOL classes. ESOL classes help teach the English language to students that are not born in the United States (like myself) or to students which English is not their native language. I took these classes from kindergarten up to the fourth grade when I passed an ESOL exit exam. I first learned of this news during a parent-teacher conference when my teacher informed my parents and I that I had passed out of my ESOL classes and this was one of my proudest moments because of how happy it made my parents. As I got older, these experiences taught me the importance of helping those who are in need to put a smile on someone’s face and to provide the hope that things will get better for those going through rough patches in

I have a lot of reasons why I have all of this anger built up inside of me and because I’m not a person who likes to talk about my problems I keep them to myself. With every day week month and year passing these problems grow bigger and bigger it doesn’t stop building until one day it explodes and there I am again in the principal's office being ask why.

I am a privileged person. I am white. I am upper-middle class. I am university educated. I am thin. I have parents who are still married to each other. I have always had some form of part time work since starting high school. I have no student debt. I am straight. I am Christian. I am an extrovert. I have a strong voice and an even stronger opinion. This made a class on inequality difficult to relate to but if anything, its shown that I do not have even the most basic understanding of what some of my less privileged peers go through everyday. Because of my privilege and powerful voice, I found it extremely difficult to express my opinions in this class because I either felt like a hypocrite or I felt domineering thus I took a silent position attempting to not only understand how some of my peers feel but also because I had never understood what it was like to be unable to share my individual opinions and stories. Although the silence was unintentional, as I went through reading my classmates posts I found myself frustrated because of something I differed in opinion on or because I felt that a grouping to which I belonged was being misrepresented and there was nothing I could do to address the situation.

We all have different experiences with different things sometimes is just a difference from when you were younger to when you're older. My experience of church was different when I was younger compared to it now in the matters of Sunday school communion and church itself.

We are all different in unique ways that make us who we are. Life comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, and orientations, and yet the only thing we, as a society, see is what makes up the best of these. So many people believe that being “different” is not acceptable in the world, and because of this, people deny themselves who they are and live in fear. I sadly found myself in the same situation, afraid and alone.

This class has cleared up some misunderstandings I have had about essays. It had always seemed that an essay was so complicated to write. I was able to write before this class but I could not figure out the way to write a proper paper. It seemed so complicated as if there were so many rules to follow. There were a few other things that I was super excited to study in this class which made the class fun as well. It’s not that I had a hard time with these other things but they helped me get through the course by keeping me on my feet, such as TED talks.

I was living in a apartment and had a bedroom in the basement. And so, my room was in the basement. One day, I had pulled 50lbs weight at work and so after I got home, I had issue breathing in my basement. In fact, I couldn't breath or yawn properly. It was weird, but it was getting better and so i went to bed. But I couldn't sleep due to breathing and I kept turning and tossing around. And so I started thinking about if I was rolling my back and crossing my arms the way vampire sleeps in the coffin. I started looking up at the ceiling, trying to sleep and then suddenly i felt like I was frozen still. I can not move my legs or hands. I tried everything to move my arms free but I felt like I was submerged in molasses. I began to panic every time I had those movement.

. We felt uncomfortable because we were alone and knew that behind our back people were thinking, “Who are these maniacs that are washing so strangely?” I couldn’t wait to leave the bathroom, so I quickly finished washing and waited for my three other friends to finish. Then the hard part came. All of us girls would have to pray in front of everyone alone. So I called my dad and said “Baba, we need to pray, do you know any safe place for us at the mall?” He told me to pray in the Arcade room because it would be full of people and if anything bad would happen we would be safe with a group of people. In my head, I knew that’s the place all the kids and families would be. I honestly was afraid that something bad would happen and started happing these thoughts: I could go and lie to my friends and say there is no place to pray or to not pray at all. But I knew I had to pray, so I pushed all those sneaky thoughts away and took all my friends to the arcade room. As we entered the arcade room, it was full of kids laughing, screaming, running around and playing with all the games that were as colorful as a rainbow. We decided to go pray in the back because not many people sit there. As we prayed, one kid stared at us for a while. I thought he must have been thinking, “Who are these crazy people bowing to an arcade game?” I couldn’t stand it any longer. We were almost done and I thought nothing bad would happen, little did I know the hate was on its way. We were on the third