My Reflection of a Not So Good Semester

A paper I wrote for my last High School English class called 'College Writing'. I want this to be of help to others not to go through what I went though. (2010)

This semester has been one of the toughest English classes I have ever been in. I'll admit it was challenging. I'm used to being able to just sit back and not work to hard, but with all of the close dead lines and the fact that I work after school made this semester hard. But I learned that I will have to find some way to manage my time better if I want to succeed in college and after. All of the papers from this semester had some type of challenge I had to overcome but the three I chose were the ones I did the best on. I chose to write about these papers because each of them had some significant value to me.

The first paper I have chosen is the very first paper we were assigned. The Cause and Effect paper was probably the easiest of all the papers we wrote. I wrote about why teens get tattoos and piercings. This paper had a lot of meaning to me because one of the people I know had decided they wanted a tattoo and they also have a lot of piercings. Well, I thought the paper would be easy but it turned out it wasn't. It was hard to find good research on this subject, which I thought was interesting seeing as how many people get tattoos and piercings and most of their parents seem to have problems with it. A lot of this paper was created from my own experiences and the things I noticed. I know that people don't really care about personal opinions, so I doubt I would use this paper for anything in the future other than as a "what not to do". I think this paper made me think more about the topics I choose and if I can research and find information about the topics. If I could go back I would certainly change my topic.

For the next paper I chose the Pros and Cons essay. I really liked this paper because as I mentioned it has personal value for me. But this paper challenged me to find good arguments for both sides of my topic. It gave me good tools to pick and choose what would best fit into each position and what didn't really matter, because in past papers I know I have rambled on about useless information just to eventually get to the point of the essay. Also I liked this paper because I was able to pick a topic I could connect with. In some papers, such as our Comparative Analysis paper, we were given our topic. I wasn't interested in it one bit so I noticed a difference in my writing from this paper, Pro/Con, and the other. I felt rather good about this paper in the end and as I go back and read it I can still make changes to it because I haven't lost interest in it. I feel a good paper is one that is flexible and changeable.

Finally, my last paper, the Problem Solution essay. This paper had the most value to me than any other paper I have written except for some personal story papers in past grades. I had thought it would be as simple as wiping dust off your shoulder, but I was so very wrong. I messed up badly and never got a peer edit for this paper because I didn't manage my time well in the least. I waited till the last minute to do this paper, like a few others of mine, and I regretted it more than I would regret stepping in something unmentionable. I am glad my teacher was kind enough to point out that my paper didn't really fill the requirements that it was supposed to. At first I was angry that he would say that but when I went back and read parts of this paper I realized he was right and I was going to have to find some way to fix it. It was actually hard to fix some of my mistakes because of the way I had written the paper. I have gone back and fixed it to the best of my ability and I'm sure it could get better but I'm almost lost. This topic, even though I was confident in it, maybe even a little over confident, was a very hard one to write about. I feel I should have found better articles to look from because the articles I did use weren't the best now that I look back on it. This paper taught me that I need to manage my time much better and to make sure that I get good solid information before I start writing.

To be honest, as I was writing this reflection I noticed one problem that kept popping up in all my papers except one. The topics. I think I realized that just because I like the topic or because I think I know a lot about the topic, that it doesn't mean it's a good one to write about. Also in this semester I learned that I'm not that good of a writer as I thought I was. I had gotten a big head from Lit and Lang III because of some of my papers, but this class shrank it down immediately. I learned that not only do I have a ton more to learn but that it's okay to ask questions and that I should ask for help when I need it. I also think I found out what criticism was really like. When my peers edited my papers they didn't really do anything but write "yeah, it was good", but for the first time my teacher was the one who gave me the real editing help. I was kind of angry sometimes because I couldn't believe that someone was telling me that my paper sucked. I was so used to seeing my peer editing that I was shocked. When I did go back and read my papers though I found out that my paper did suck. I think this made me realize that college papers are not going to be a breeze. I hated this class through the whole semester, but now that it's almost over and I look back at all my papers I noticed that each one has given me something new to work on and I actually look forward to testing out what I have learned from this experience. I think everyone should take this class, it will save a lot of headache and troubles in the future. These three papers I wrote about will come in handy, I think, if I have to write a similar paper in the future. But as I said, I don't think I'm going to write about things that are significant to me anymore. I've learned they don't make good papers.

Author's Note

This was a paper written for a class. I hope it can help. Comments and any kind of feedback are welcome!