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Jaylen Forbes

EN 101

9 December 2019

Final Class Reflection

I enjoyed my time this semester in this class. Throughout this semester I have tried to

practice better writing skills and I tried to be more emotional in my writing. This class was

challenging because in high school I rarely wrote any papers and I did not take English seriously

until I got here. But after writing different types of essays, learning to be more emotional in my

writing, and writing and drafting essays, this class has taught me a lot about English and a lot

about writing.

This semester I worked on two habits of mind: responsibility and creativity. To me

responsibility means to just get all of my work done and do not skip out on assignments like I did

in high school. It also means to me to take care of business on and off the court like holding

myself accountable in certain situations. I stated in my introduction letter that I lacked

responsibility in certain things in my life. So this is why I chose to be more responsible this

semester in this class. I read all the assignments and I made sure to complete all of my essays on

time. In these ways I have built more responsibility as a student at the University of Alabama.

My other habit of mind was creativity. To me this means to just express more things in my

writing. To make my writing more interesting for people to read. I stated in my memoir about the

time I missed the Dandy Dozen list. While talking about it I was very detailed about how I found

out I did not make it and how I handled it after I found it out. I feel like this English class has
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helped me become a better writer overall. I am more responsible and more creative with my

writing than I have ever been.

I can say that since I have taken this class my writing skills have improved significantly.

To create my essays I first started by just thinking out the process of what I was going to write

about. Just thinking about every detail to make my essay more interesting. After I did that I

started to make an outline. In the outline I starting writing out the main ideas of the essay.

Between every main idea there were small details to help explain the main idea. Small details

that would convince the reader and entertain the reader to keep reading my paper. After doing all

of this I started drafting my paper. I write about two drafts in all before I end up writing my final.

With the two drafts I go back and make sure everything is correct. I go back and see if there is

anything I can possibly fix. Like I see if there are any spelling correcting or even details that I

can explain even better to make my writing better.

I can possibly say that I all my writings connected in one simple way. It was basically all

of them had dedication in them at some point. If they did not have dedication in them it was hard

working. I can say that my coach taught me this hard working thing. My coach and my dad. To

get all of my school work done I had to have the dedication to want to be better at this than when

I was in high school. I had to work harder than when I was in high school. This did not just apply

for school work. It also applies for when I am on the court playing basketball. To get to where I

want to be in life I have to work hard. I have to have the dedication to do things that I may not

want to do sometimes like my coach did. Both of these things will help me be the man I want to

be in life and help me live the life I want to live.

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This English class was by far the best English class I have ever taken. It has helped me in

many different ways. It helped me become more responsible, more creative, and more emotional

with my writing skills. It has also helped me expand my vocabulary in some type of way. This

class was most definitely fun. Fun because I got to write about things I actually cared about and

things that actually helped me in real life. This is the first time that I have ever been able to do

something like this since taking English classes.