Dear educational staff and future employers

I began my college education in the fall of 2013. My decision to attended

college is due to the self-motivating urge to achieve my goals. Pursing my educational
goals will assist me in achieving my terminal goals. As I reflect to this past semester
one class that stands out from the rest is English 101. English 101 is a challenging and
demanding course that demanded hard work and dedication. Some of the challenges I
faced included critical thinking skills, structure errors, research skills, fallacies, cited
sources, and in class essays.
One of the greatest challenge I faced was analyzing and evaluated an issue in
order to form a judgment, I am talking about critical thinking. Critical thinking was a
skill I had not yet perfected. That quickly changed, through engaging in class room
discussions, debates, analyzing and evaluating text I began able to point out faults in
other peoples writing as well as my own. Through class room discussion and debates,
I slowly become able to anticipate the opposing views of others. During classroom
debates I would pay attention to people who had opposing views to see how they
would address their argument. This helped what writing my own critical thinking
papers by address the opposing viewpoint without using logical fallacies.
I further enhanced my critical thinking abilities through studying the text. The
text Professor Ogbara had us read is so well written that it itself became a learning
tool. The two text that helped me to think critically was Andrew Carnegies, Gospel
of wealth and Karl Marxs, The Communist Manifesto. These text are of opposing
views but both text come across as very plausible ideas. Both text Demonstrated how
factual and hypothetical information can be used to support your claim. Once I began

to use properly use factual and hypothetical information in my writing, I immediately

noticed how my claims were supported. Although my claims were better supported, I
lacked good structure and I occasionally used logical fallacies to support my claim. I
addressed these issues by attending Professor Ogbaras office hours.
During Professor Ogbaras office hours professor Ogbara defined what
logical fallacies are and how I continued to use them throughout my paper. Once I
knew what I was looking for, when doing my revisions, I was able to correct the
logical fallacies within my paper. I later attended her office hours to ensure I had
addressed the issues. What she told was I addressed most of the issues but I still
lacked structure. She printed out an outline so I could I organized my ideas. Once my
ideas were organized my paper began to flow better. For me this was a great
accomplishment because most of my essays in the beginning of the semester, where
supported by logical fallacies and had faulty structure. Eliminating logical fallacies
from my paper lead to a better supported claim and properly structured paper makes
my points flow easier and maintains the focus of the reader. Now that I knew how to
avoid using logical fallacies and how to properly structure my paper, I face another
dilemma, citing sources.
Since I had little to no experience writing research papers I didnt know how
to properly write a work cites page. My first attempt to write a work cites page was
just a page with a bold heading that said, work cited and a list of URLs from the
website where I had gotten the information from. I overcame this issues in two stages.
The first stage is when professor Ogbara handed out a handout on how to create a
work cites page and walked the class through the process of citing a source. The

second stage was when I attended professor Ogbaras office hours. Professor Ogbara
Clearfield the order in which the information is presented and which parts of the
information are italicized.
The hardest challenged I faced was in class essays. The essays are timed and
required citations from the text to support your argument. This was hard to me
because I dont like writing or highlighting in my books. The way I overcame this
challenge was by reading the text, highlighting main points and answering the critical
thinking questions at the end of each story. This helped me to prepare for the essay
because, I thoroughly knew what the text was about and I know what information I
could use as supporting evidence as well as were to find the information. This helped
me maximize my time and support my claims.
Now that I have reached the end of the semester I feel that I was successful in
overcoming the challenges that were set before me.