Reflection letter (1)

This is my first quarter at Highline Community College. After high school I studied a few courses, but decided to work for a few years first. I was wrapped up in the petty workforce and procrastinated on returning to school, but life changes and here I am in a new country, fresh start and find myself enrolled in a writing class at Highline. I hadn't realized how out of the academic loop I had been for the past 5+ years.
I found writing this time around to be a bit challenging. In my essay writing I found the difficulty in organization, I could not arrange the topics researched to make it flow, or write for an interesting read. In my first essay titled " The Systematic Destruction of a (First) Nation through Residential Schools", I believe it was such a heavy topic and another challenge was how to incorporate all the negative stories and coverage into something topical, meaning writing about it in an unbiased form. I attempted to explain and educate the audience about residential schools, but found that it was much deeper than I could have written in such a short essay, and very limited time. It is something that I have placed on my project plate for further writing, when the time is right.
My writing needed structure and I believe part of my experience I gained from writing 101 was how to use the "they say" and "I say" point of views. This was a little more evident in the second essay I wrote about possible solutions for convicted sexual offenders; and more so in my third essay personal narrative about home. The first two essay topics were very controversial in theory, and I found it both interesting and difficult to choose which side of the fence to write about.
Although I have a long road to learning the art of writing, I have gained a little more confidence when I write. I have opened myself up to accepting peer review, and publicly posting my work online. I have lots of room for improvements when it comes to essay writing, and as stated before, I plan on returning to my first essay "The Systematic Destruction of a (First) Nation through Residential Schools". This is a project for me that I will thoroughly research and write about. the challenge for me is removing much emotion from such a topic because I am a grandchild of the school survivors. This class was just a stepping stone to learning more of how to write academically. Although I found a lot of it to be challenging, I enjoyed it and absorbed it as a learning experience.




Crystal Black