Reflection This year in my English 1010 class I went in knowing only one thing, and it was that James Celestino was a great professor. Interested and willing I was excited to take a break from horrible algebraic problems and exercise my ability to critically think in my writing. I felt that my ability to write papers was decent and that would be all I needed to know. I soon realized how naïve I really was and how the main concepts taught this past semester has changed the way I construct my papers. I hope to share with you all the process and journey I experience while taking English 1010 and how this general course has changed my life for the better. The course goals this semester was broken in to four parts: Rhetorical Strategies, Critical Thinking Processes, Composing Processes, and Conventions of Writing. He lectured these concepts during class while preparing us for our final, which was to write a seven page argument paper on a topic of our choice. What I really respected about this set up was that each assignment had purpose and helped support our final. For example we were asked to write a writers rationale essay about our topic, I chose police brutality, and this assignment helped me acknowledge that I was really good at ranting off on a subject to fill up space for my papers. This was why I felt so comfortable writing papers, it was because I was good at sharing my biases. I was definitely humbled and I set a goal to become a better academia writer. (Don’t even know if I used academia right.) Some other challenges I faced while gathering research for my argument paper was insuring that I was following the rhetorical triangle (writing according to purpose and audience). I seem to revert back to ranting off on my own opinions and then having to stop and delete them. I have noticed that this has impacted my writing in general and I’m much more specific and precise in the way that I write. Critical Thinking Processes helped me think more morally and ethically on topics such as capital punishment or legalization of marijuana. I also serve as a student officer for SLCCSA and it helped me as a leader make decisions based off morals and ethics. This critical thinking process also helped me in many of my business courses that I’m taking this semester. Many times I was asked to draft and edit assignments as a part of the Composing Process and I was recently taught how to do so I had opportunity to apply what I was learning. Lastly I knew nothing about citing papers and took a guess each time I had to cite sources. I’m extremely happy I have been taught to do so properly and I’m starting to feel comfortable with writing. Overall I have enjoyed this class and look forward to learning more in English 2010.