Andres Llamas

English 115

Professor Rowley

3 Dec, 2012

My Influence to Excel

 

Going into college I was unsure of the skills and capabilities that I had gathered over my high school years. I knew I had paid attention to what I was taught but the actual material I thought had not prepared me for college level courses so naturally I was skeptical. My senior year of high school was especially less structured. My teacher had just been hired at the school and this was his first time teaching an Honors English class. The entire year, I spent it watching movies and reading books and short essays that did not teach me anything about how to better my skills in literature. When I found out that my SAT scores had jumped me from the basic English level courses to 115, again I was fearful. I thought that I was going to sink as soon as the semester began and that I was going to fail it all together. I quickly realized that I was not going to be thrown into the shark tank, but rather guided by a motivated and dedicated professor.

            The first day of class was the day I saw that I was not going to be allowed to fail. It was clear to see that my professor was one who was determined to see her students succeed and excel. She was not the type to sit idly by and let her students slowly drown and leave their grades in their own hands. With the weekly exercises on grammar improvement, vocabulary expansion and readings on thesis building and how to improve your essays, I feel I learned a lot. I do know that my grammar and actual sentence structure needs work because I have had so many years of what I call loose instruction, which is basically not being instructed on correct punctuation, or grammar.

            All of the newly acquired skills that have been taught to me over this last semester, I can acknowledge still need fine tuning. Through the semester though I have gained a valuable base upon which I can build my skills further. I will be able to use this base that I have to articulate my thoughts and emotions better to my peers and professors now that I have gotten the fundamentals required for higher levels of English classes. I am very grateful to my hard working professor for giving me these skills. Thank you professor Rowley.