final paper

Dear English 1a instructor,

My college career was mostly out the state of California. I attended Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington NC were I struggled in multiple subjects especially English. This was not due to the lack of my skills however it was to the lack of motivation. I arrived in California on January twenty- fourth of this year; I moved here to be with my father, upon arrival I enlisted in Berkeley City College in a late start English 248 course taught by Cleavon Smith. This was not what I had grown to know or expect from college English, however Mr. Smith was engaging and entertaining; and most of all he made the class something I wanted to come to. I actually, for the first time in a long time, enjoyed school and didn’t want to skip out or fall asleep. Because of Mr. Smith I learned, was engaged in the class, and wanted to do better in school. He made me realize that school isn’t a waste of money and time it’s something that can be enjoyed and is made so by having a great teacher.
This class has allowed me to further my writing and reasoning skills due to its philosophical tendencies. Over the entirety of my academic career I have achieved a great number of skills which I am proud of. In my elementary school years I was one of the youngest to achieve a college level of reading comprehension and as such have had little trouble in understanding assignments and completing them swiftly, often resulting in me aiding fellow students to grasp the concept. Having said that there have been times where I overlooked a detail and as such I then sought help only to discover it was something small I had missed. This aperient rise and fall has humbled me and allowed me to never belittle or look down on someone for not understanding something. My writing skills have vastly improved throughout my student career. For the longest time I had trouble getting through and assignment it was to short and severely lacked detail. Aside from that I would, from time to time, run off into other ideas or things that I had been thinking about and never even attempt to tie them into my essay. I am currently able to conduct essays that stay on topic and are thoroughly well developed. This change in which I acquired has been something I am still working at and often find myself going back over what I do and shorting the page count on an essay. Cleavon told me that when writing many good ideas are lost because we stop to correct and edit our papers. The key is to write everything that comes to mind and then whenever we are done then go and edit. To my surprise this works amazingly well and I write things that during the normal routine I would’ve forgotten about. There are a few things I struggle with still in school even though the list is short they are things in which I wish to remedy. Spelling is my worst enemy though I have a high reading comprehension I can’t spell my way out of anything. If it weren’t for spell check on the computer id be up for hours on end with Mr. Webster fumbling through his pages in order to make corrections. Another area in which I need improvement is in grammar and punctuation. This is the area that I have had little improvement in since I started school I have the most difficult with this then in any other subject in school, and would really like to make headway in improving this. I feel as though it would allow my essays and other forms of writing to explode and stand out from many others. Also I believe that writing would become exponentially more appealing to me if I didn’t have to worry about my use of punctuation. Pronunciation is one of two additional things on which I seek improvement. I have a very thick country accent and am able to mask it fairly well, due to being made fun of when I was younger. As such I often have difficulty correctly pronouncing words when reading aloud. For this reason I tend to shy away from it as much as possible in class. The other thing in which I wish to improve on is retaining more of what I read. I have this innate tendency to read and answer questions asked immediately about the piece of literature in which I just read, however it’s not long after that that I forget all but the main points of the reading; unless I find it completely intriguing. I hope that this letter has allowed you to get to know me and will further assist you in teaching, thank you.