English 110 for me started like any other class. On the first day of class, we got to know each other, everybody introducing themselves and telling a little about themselves. We talked about what we would be doing in class. Went through the syllabus and the grading contract. For me, this was not new. I had been through this before and it probably would not be any different. That is until I realized the freedom I would have with my own writing. Now while I am ashamed to admit that this would be my second time taking English 110 I felt like this time it was different. Almost like a whole new class. My last semester engl 110 was one of the very first classes that I would participate in, in college given the fact that well I had just started college. Yet this class did not end up so well for me. One because all of my classes were writing no math no nothing and taking 5 similar classes for my first time in college probably wasn’t a good idea but I didn’t know that. In this English class, I had a lovely teacher but I felt like I was back in high school where all my writing just had to sound professional almost boring in a way. What I mean by this is that I didn’t feel like I had the same freedom to speak my mind as I did in this semester’s engl 110 class. I used to not like my writing AT ALL because even though I was the one writing it I felt like it had no life, no feeling no nothing. Almost like an unseasoned piece of chicken. So looking back at it now my writing has improved by an unholy amount. 

Take for example my literacy narrative titled “Navigating Identity” When I heard my professor say the words “write as you wish” I was confused at first but once I started writing there was no stopping me. I went all in writing in a way that even I was surprised by the time I was done. I wrote jokes, I was ironic, I wrote as if it was a comedy show and the reader was my audience which technically it was and I had to keep constantly interacting with them and being relatable so that the show could be better and the audience could feel more comfortable. And in the end, I achieved this and more. This paper in my opinion was full of life compared to the way I was writing last semester and all before that. 

And speaking of life if my written narrative was good my spoken was even better. Before all of this, my presentations were almost as boring as my writing. I’m just joking they were even worse. It was like making a kindergartener learn quantum physics and the class was being taught by William Mcgonagal. It is just not pretty and painful to watch. And yet this semester I somehow managed to do something that actually inspired other people to do the same for their future assignments. In my writing and my actual presentations I kept using imagery and for my presentations, I also used actual images which helped tie everything together. This isn’t something that I was used to doing but I pushed myself beyond my boundaries which ended up with me being more confident in the work I was doing. 

This also resulted in me starting to use rhetorical devices such as anecdotes, hyperboles, and metaphors. Many more were in my opinion accidentally used but these were the ones that stood out the most. My analytical skills weren’t the best but they definitely got better during this term because I would have never realized that I was using these devices without even realizing. But this is something that hypes me up because I never understood how I could possibly include these things in my writing yet somehow I found a way and I didn’t even know. 

Writing my narrative to me was freeing and that felt good because once it came time to present I realized just how oppressed most of us were or are because we come from different parts of the world. 

As we went around sharing our narratives I realized just how many of us had gone through the same thing. It was the same when we were reading texts like Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue and Trevor Noah’s “The Chameleon”. In one way or another, we have all been discriminated against and looked down on just because we were seen as “different” than others. Either because of how we looked, what language we spoke, or how we even spoke it. 

Anyway, if this semester taught me anything it was where to look for sources and which to use. Whenever I had to write a paper that I didn’t really know anything about I would be the type to search for whatever it was I was writing about and just use the first link that popped up. This class taught me all the things that I could use and how to properly give credit to the writer of these articles. One example is my paper titled “Health Care in the United States”. When I started writing this paper I knew that our healthcare system wasn’t the best I just never knew how bad it was. But as I was writing this paper and I started using search engines such as jstore or Google Scholar I kept finding so many new articles that a regular Google search wouldn’t show. This really helped me with not just this class but many others since I was constantly writing papers similar to this one. This way I could use different articles with different yet similar information to further prove my point. 

All in all, I enjoyed this class because, with the freedom I was given, it was almost like I had unlocked a new part of myself. I may not have achieved many things or as many as others but became a better writer which is something very important to me. I finally feel happy with the way I write and the stuff I’m writing and I no longer feel the need to be embarrassed because it is either too long, too boring, or just not good enough in general.