My English Journey 

Let me take you on a journey through my writing and how I think I’ve gradually changed and improved over the course of this class. Speaking of this class, Freshman Composition, this essay is a grade for this class. My initial thought of this English class, “Oh lord. This class is going to kick my butt. How am I going to handle this class plus going to work?” However, looking back at that thought now, I think I’m doing decent at keeping up with things. This class has shown me that if I keep pushing myself, I could really improve right before my eyes. In my own way, this class was hard for me to keep up with. I had to work so I would have to make sure that things were semi done before I go to work to make sure that I wouldn’t miss a deadline or just completely miss some homework. I would be drained and so tired after, but I would still stay up and continue to finish that work because, it needed to be done. I do tend to fall behind, like right now, but I always thought that it’s better than not doing anything at all. However, looking back at all the work I have done in this class I can really see that I improved incredibly. Instead of saying it, allow me to further explain. 

In Phase 1, Written Language and Literary Narrative essay, I took the approached of making my essay almost like a story. I talked about my bullying and how kids growing up didn’t like me much due to my accent. I had started it in the very beginning talking about the facial expressions I had gotten then followed by the little weird things that kids would do around me when I spoke to them. That’s when all those bits and pieces of what had happened in my day had followed up to me finally realizing that people didn’t want to talk to be because I had an accent. The ways I had described my style of writing this WLLN essay was stated in my cover letter beforehand saying that I chose to have my essay be tailored to people with strong accents “so that they can understand how I felt during the many of moments that I clearly [explained]”. It helped people relate to what I was feeling in the moment and can clearly understand my feelings of sadness and alienation. I also wanted to have people not to be alone when I explained my feelings and being bullied for simply speaking and being myself at school. The way I had managed to “have people’s faces and facial expressions to be heavily shown. It helps the reader picture what their faces look like as they look at me weird when I speak to them.” My quoted evidence had all come from my cover letter in my WLLN essay, to have you understand what my start to improvement had come from. All in all, I made this essay all about having the audience come along through memory lane and visualize what I had gone through at a young age. I didn’t want the audience to sympathize, I wanted them to simply connect and possibly be like “I definitely know how that feels”. That’s when we move onto Phase 2.  

Phase 2 was the Rhetorical Analysis Essay, mine was about the analyzation of Amy Tan’s essay “Mother’s Tongue”. I wanted people to understand that the phase “American Dream” was nothing but false hope for immigrants. America was shown to be amazing because of the hard work that immigrants had did to make America look like it would be amazing to live here. The way I had chosen to convey that is by finding evidence in Amy Tan’s essay that had supported my overall message while still breaking down her essay. I had pushed my language and rhetorical choices to be show how “‘standardized’ English is not the same for all people”. By people, I meant immigrants and how the change for them isn’t as easy especially in a new living setting. Compared to my Phase 1 essay, I wanted to push towards making the audience understand someone else’s situation rather than my own. During this essay, I did have roadblocks when it came to trying to push the emotions and make the audience either relate or try to understand Amy Tan, but I had quickly improved by “[engaging] more actively in the collaborative and social aspects of this whole process”. Doing so had helped me understand how I can change sentences and certain tones in my essay to achieve the result that I had wanted from the beginning. When writing this essay, I did have problems with internet and trying to be on track with all classes because things were starting to pick up. However, I believe that the result for this essay was a success. Then on to Phase 3.  

The Phase 3 was the Researched Essay about the stigma of mental health in minorities, this by far was one essay that I really had put my all into it. I had so many things pushing me back, but I eventually pushed through. I had finished this essay ahead of time and made sure it was packed with information, however once again with my internet had just told me “Stop right there!” and everything was deleted. All the work I had done was gone overnight. Just when I was about to turn it in the day of at around 9am, I had seen there was nothing there. I had to go to work that day so I brought my laptop to work and during my break, I typed and ate as much as I could. I even typed some on my phone when I had the chance. Luckily when I got home, I immediately got to work and finished just minutes before it would be considered late. However, when I look at this essay, I think its way better than my original because I chose to focus on the flow and structure since I tend to have problems with. I had even tailored my language to have the “tone of the essay sounds more persuasive to insight that something needs to change so everyone is treated with the proper care and not neglected”. I didn’t want it to be very critical but rather neutral but specifically stating the problem. I wanted the audience to learn something from this essay and maybe on their own try to help decrease this increasing stigma. I also believe that I improved greatly in “finding a way to introduce the evidence then create an effective analysis to break it down and transition to the next piece of evidence or to end the paragraph”. This greatly helped because I feel like the reader wouldn’t be confused on where the context and evidence are separated. It shows how the essay is structed to flow and easy to follow while reading, since it’s a big part that I feel like I struggle with.  

In conclusion, this class was a big help to brighten my writing skills and make me feel like I don’t have to conform to so many rules when it comes to writing. For once I felt like I was my own person when I wrote all my essays, you could hear my tone, my thought process, everything that would let you know that I’m my own person. Back in my charter high school, they wanted everything to be a certain way and even if they told you that you could change it up, it was a lie. I felt like a robot doing my essays and I hated every one of them in school, n matter how amazing it was. It never felt like me, but this English class has really been understanding and allowed me to make my assignment be my own. All my improvement won’t be taken for granted. Thank you, Professor Crowe, for making this class a good experience for my start of college!