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Alexes Del Valle

Professor Deadrick
ENGL 102 31326
5 May 2016
Not Everything Blossoms in Spring: A Reflection
Four months ago I pulled into the college parking lot, and made my way onto campus
ready to begin the semester. I enrolled in four courses: Adolescent Psychology, Biology 150
along with the corresponding lab, and English 102. I had just completed English 101 the
previous semester and felt prepared to begin the next chapter in improving my writing skills. And
so it began as usual, introductions that eased into the course material. However, as the weeks
progressed, it was clear that this would not be as ordinary a semester as I had anticipated.
Instead, this semester became a shameful failure.
I came into this course with an eager attitude and an open mind. I enjoy school, I enjoy
learning, and I enjoy writing. When I was younger and in high school, I did not like writing very
much. It was a source of anxiety and stress. It wasnt until a year after I graduated when I began
to appreciate it more. Before then I would only write when I needed to for the occasional essay,
but then as I began to face to new world that college presented me with, I began to realize the
therapeutic qualities in expressing oneself through the act of writing. Thus, I began to write when
I had time and felt inspired, not for any reason at all not because of preset deadlines, or for the
sake of having to turn something in instead, just to experiment with words. So when I enrolled
into English 101, I found that when I was assigned an essay, it wasnt as morbid as it used to be.
I saw these essays in a new light and a new attitude. I saw them as opportunities to take my
writing to the next level, and that I did. Thus, I intended to do the same in this course.

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My goal at the start of the semester was to master all of the course outcomes. The first
few weeks began with a good start. I made friends in the class; which I was very happy about. I
am an introverted person, however I have been working on my social skills and have been
gradually becoming more extroverted. Making those friends was an achievement that I had taken
as a good sign for the course. I felt it indicated that it would be a success. Therefore, I was
excited for the assignments that were to come, and saw them as challenges that I wanted to
conquer.
In those first few weeks of the semester I was able work on my skills for critical analysis
and reasoning by learning how to think critically about texts, visualize different viewpoints of
argument positions, and recognize logical flaws in argumentation. However, a few weeks into the
semester, a few personal situations arose in my personal life which had a negative impact on my
attendance and work. I missed many classes and fell behind, but I didn't drop any classes because
I believed that I could get back on track. As time progressed, I attended class sporadically, but
kept falling further behind.
At the very end of the semester, I began working on the last few assignments and was
able to work on some skills from the Information Literacy section of the course outcomes in the
course syllabus, including identifying valid topics for research, using online resources to search
for sources that are college level appropriate, using standard document procedures, and avoiding
plagiarism. But despite the small amount of progress I made in the end, I remain unsatisfied with
my performance in the course, and will need to retake it next semester.
Overall, I have ended this semester with both positive and negative feelings. Negative
because I am not proud of my performance level; but positive because when things don't turn out
the way one has anticipated or intended, one has to remember that all experiences help mature

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and mold us. I believe that this setback will only fuel my desire to achieve better next semester.
This one semester will not define who I am as a student, nor my capabilities because this is not
who I am. I do not take failure lightly.