English 100 Class Reflection

When I applied to Middle College, I was concerned about my ability to meet the writing expectations of my English 100 class. English would prove to be difficult, as my professor expected great work and many revisions. The course would become my revelation class, where my writing skills evolved to showcase more textual analysis and better reading comprehension. Outlines and planning tools became important aspects of our grades and they helped my writing process tremendously. I was able to use these new methods when writing the many literary analyses my professor assigned us. As I wrote these essays, I developed an appreciation for the authors and their craft. The stories offered new perspectives in life, and I had to break apart the abstract

meanings that the writers left for me. My professor increased his expectations as we progressed--now we were including more citations, embedding text and facts and refining grammatical structures. He began to assign bigger, and tougher essay’s for us to finish. Each of the essays he assigned, I completed; giving myself plenty of time to develop and refine my work. However, I would hit a snag on the final major essay, as it was on a rather complex subject: love in the modern era. Before the essay was given to the class, we were required to read an entire book-(Erich Fromm’s, “The Art of Loving”) on love, and had to determine the extent of Fromm’s ideas were still relevant today. To do this, we would have to scrutinize Fromm’s intentions, before crafting a rebuttable argument on whether or not love was influenced by internal and external factors. About a week before the essay was due, I was worrying about how I wanted to write it and whether my argument was strong enough. My respect for my teacher, the complexities of Erich Fromm’s book and the weight of the paper culminated into a sizeable if not helpful fear that helped me to get to the eureka moment and then steadily to the counterclaims/main argument. After I worked on the paper for several days, re-reading my points, and fleshing out the analysis, I was able to turn in a paper that was well received. By completing the course, I was able to improve both my skills and confidence in writing.