Reflective Essay: English Composition Class In Hocking College

Writing has never been my favorite activity. Before this class I took English Composition class in Hocking College and I had chance to write several essays about different topics. Before Hocking College I never had written an essay in English language. So going into research class did make me a little nervous. As a middle aged women , out of school for 20 years and English as a second language I am probably have a little disadvantage compared to the other kids , fresh out of highschool but I welcome the challenge and tried to do my best.
This class assignments were divided into small chunks which introduced every little nuance about the final paper. I liked the part where I could write a little about myself and get to know the other students.
Creating a thesis was a little bit challenging for me but with my instructors help a got it right. I learned after two first assignments that I needed to follow instructions step by step, and after doing that I was able to get good grades in my class assignments.
Our instructor Audria was a great help and always available when questions arouse.
Selecting the topic was easy for me. I have been interested about health, healthy eating for a while now thats why I chose my topic genetically modified organisms in which I had been interested before so I had read several books and watched some documentaries but all my previous information had come from non scientific and not peer reviewed sources therefore it was exciting for me to read all the articles in the academic journals. Also the easy part was finding the good reliable sources from academic journals because my chosen topic had many articles to choose from. That part was the most enjoyable for me and I did read a lots of articles. The week when we started to learn about APA and MLA reference styles seemed overwhelming in the beginning, so many rules but the Moodle had some great examples posted which I used a lot also my instructor wrote a comment with every grade and that helped a lot.
The annotated bibliography assignment was quite easy for me too because the week before I had done annotated bibliography homework for my psychology
class. My strength would definitely be finding good reliable sources and referencing to them in APA style.Also for me it takes a long time to write an essay and this class took many hours. My personal opinion is that this class is more than one credit class. After submitting my final draft my weakest point was proofreading, also I struggle with English grammar since English is not my first language and my sentences may might come out awkward.
My instructor’s comments were very helpful and detailed and helped me a lot to revise and correct my final draft. And my final challenge was when I had submitted my revised , polished research paper , which I had proofread over and over and when I went and looked it over in “Turn it in” program I discover that all the spacing was off and my paper on which I had been working so hard was a big mess. I am very thankful to my instructor again that she helped me to re-submit my paper.
I feel that I did great in this class and I know that I tried my best and spent many hours trying to perfect or improve my writing. The materials for this course were very helpful on the Moodle and very well put together. I did not collaborate with other students but I did enjoy reading others research papers and learned a lot in several topics what interested me like assisted suicide and essential
oils. I believe that my ability to write is extremely important in my future profession in nursing. I learned a lot about how to research academic journals and at the same time enjoyed the article's and knowledge I obtained. I most likely spent more time and effort in this class because English is not my mother language but on the other hand I needed that class. I would like to quote one of my favorite authors Wayne Dyer who said “If you change the way you look at things, things will change”. I have been welcoming new challenges to my life and have found out that being excited about something new and difficult will make the learning much easier.