Brandi Kiker Professor Presnell English 1103 December 7, 2012 A Job Well Done: Reflection of English 1103 I think

the most challenging project for me was my personal essay, I have always wanted to tell the story of my sister but it always seems to be such a long story that it gets harder and harder to tell when I mention my sister and someone says that I dont have a sister and instead of arguing with them I try to tell them the story of my sister but then they just become confused because they dont understand and cant relate to the story. I figured that if I wrote the story on paper not only would it help me organize the story a little more for the next time that I need to tell it but I figured that it might would also help people understand me better when I tell that I do have a sister. It was also hard for me to tell the story of my sister because it is an emotional story and im not always happy that I dont have a sister when I should have. My personal essay brought a lot of emotions to the surface when I was writing it because not only do I wish I had a sister here to do sister-like things with but it also makes me sad for my mom; I know that she wishes that she could have all of the kids that God planned for her to have and that she would love to have been able to see all of her kids grow up and see what they would become and do with their own lives. But at the same time it makes me want to be closer to my mom and help her as much as I can because I know that we both miss her but we have different perspectives on how we miss her. I always think if it would be harder if I were to have known my sister and saw her die, as my mom did, or to know I have a sister and never get to have her here for me and never get to meet her or know what she was like at all. Also on the other hand writing my

personal essay made me even more jealous of the girls that do have older sisters and it made me envy them, which I wish I wouldnt do because I shouldnt envy anything, but it also makes me realize how angry it makes me when I see younger sisters saying mean things about their older sisters because it makes me think to myself that they have no idea how lucky they are to have their older sister around and have them there to support them and understand them as a teenager. Another thing that made my personal essay difficult to write was what others would think about it. I had to choose carefully on what I wrote because I was scared that many people would say things if I said something wrong. Even though my personal essay was the hardest thing that I had to write this semester, I really enjoyed doing it and being able to tell any story that I wanted to, the way I wanted to. My strongest piece that I did during the semester definitely had to be my inquiry paper on comparing male and female serial killers. My inquiry paper was my strongest piece because it was the easiest for me to write and I enjoyed doing it the most. I enjoyed do the inquiry paper the most because we showed a whole new perspective on doing research and writing a paper on it other than writing a research paper. I love that we were able to pick any topic that we wanted to and that we could use first person. By getting to use first person in my paper I was able to not only tell about the research that I found but I got to also put my own view and personality into the paper. The fact that I chose to write about the differences and similarities between male and female serial killers also helped my inquiry paper to be my strongest piece. Before I wrote my inquiry paper, I knew a little bit about serial killers but I never really knew about the differences between them so writing about it really interested me. I was also very interested in this topic because I am a criminal justice major, it strongly relates to what I want to do because not only do I want to be in the criminal justice field I want to be in the forensics department and be able to

help catch serial killers, not only men but the women also! My inquiry paper was the easiest for me to write but also my strongest because I put my heart into it because to me it wasnt just a part of my English 1103 grade but it will one day deal with my career and my life! I probably learned the most about writing with my personal essay. The personal essay was the first paper we wrote this semester and I learned many new things when writing my personal essay such as how to make a paper a lot stronger with quotes and that just free writing your ideas first and then organizing it into paragraphs makes a stronger and more unique paper. The personal essay did a great job of setting me up to write an even stronger paper for my inquiry project. The personal essay was tough to write because I had to get used to the new writing style, writing in first person, but the challenges that came along with writing the paper definitely helped me learn a lot and grow as a writer. As I said before the personal essay was a great way to set us up to write an even better paper for the inquiry and it really did. For me I just rather eased into writing my inquiry project, I still had to work hard on my inquiry paper but the writing just seemed to come natural to me for the inquiry paper. My e-portfolio helped show my progress over the semester by displaying how my work became what it was. My e-portfolio displayed the work that I felt was my best work and it also showed my not so great work such as my free writing just so it would show the essence of how a grew as a writer through the semester. My e-portfolio is uniquely mine because I have added all of my own work and personal pictures to it. Not only did I add personal pictures to my eportfolio but also my theme reflects me by being purple, one of my favorite colors. I hoped that my e-portfolio would help people get to know me through my not only pictures and introduction of myself but also through my work and stories that I was able to put within my e-portfolio.

I also made my e-portfolio unique by adding pictures for each of my pieces of work. Each photo in my e-portfolio represents what I did on each page of my e-portfolio. An example of this is my rough draft of my inquiry paper. Above where I posted my rough draft of my inquiry paper, using scribd, I added a picture of a purple mountain. I chose the purple because it is one of my favorite colors but I also chose this certain picture of the mountain because the left side of the mountain was really steep and would be really hard to climb whereas the right side had a very small slope and would be easy to get down from. I saw this picture as a representation of my rough draft; the left side of the mountain represented everything before the rough draft such as all of the research and works cited things that went along with it, the rough draft would be the top of the mountain where I could finally take a deep breath and just enjoy to write my paper and after my rough draft it would just be an easy walk from there on out just having to do some revising to my rough draft with the help of Professor Presnell. When the semester began I saw myself as a very undetailed and boring writer, I never thought I was good at writing and never truly liked it much, in fact I almost hated it but I figured that there must me some kind of reason that I ended up in 1103 and not 1101 so I figured that I would take the challenge and run with it. During the semester I saw myself becoming more and more interested in writing, I dont know if it was professor Presnells way of teaching or just me becoming a stronger writer but whatever it was I liked it; it really gave me a push to become a strong, detailed, and more caring writer than what I was at the beginning of the semester. I never liked writing much when I came into this class, it always seemed so much like a chore instead of something fun to do because all of the strict guidelines in high school that they gave you such as not writing in first person and in this class it let you have a lot more freedom and essence of what you want to write, I believe that this class not only helped me find my inner writer but it has also

helped me find a little bit more about myself than I ever knew. I have ended up actually enjoying writing instead of dreading it so now hopefully any time that I have to write one of those short 3 page papers for criminal justice then I will be able to dive right and take control of my writing better than what I have done in the past. I have grown so much as a writer in this one semester than I have my whole life; I have never had such a great time writing things. I look at writing now as a way to tell something that its hard to explain and organize aloud instead of a dreadful doom. Writing ideas and thoughts down is a great way to clear your mind and English 1103 has helped me realized how important writing can be, whether it is a paper for a grade or just a way to tell your own story or in this case maybe both.