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Yanelli Villegas
Professor Collins
ENGL 1301
27 November 2016
Flourishing as a Writer
My name is Yanelli Villegas. I was homeschooled all throughout high school and was
able to graduate at a very young age. I got to take three classes this semester at Alvin Community
College, and composition got to be one of them. Although I considered myself to be an
acceptable writer, this class helped me to improve to a newer level. This class was a little more
challenging than I had anticipated. I had the opportunity to acquire a new set of skill in writing
thesis statements, reaching the word count, and upgrading my diction through essay three,
ratiocination, and peer reviews.
In the beginning, writing thesis statements was always the most difficult part of
constructing an essay for me. I would tend to overthink the whole purpose of a thesis statement;
which was to summarize everything that I was going to talk to about in my essay. Throughout the
semester, writing thesis statements became much easier as my professor would always provide
the students with a formula to help them stay on track. In the diagnostic essay, professor Collins
provided a formula that we could use if one chose. This helped with students over analyzing the
information, or getting confused.
Being able to reach the word count was fairly easy, but as class progressed the word
count would elevate, thus making it more difficult. The first essay I had to write consisted of 500
words. This essay wasnt as difficult as the ones to come. What helped me throughout the
semester was to elaborate and research all of my topics. Instead of being bland and straight-

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forward with my essays, I learned to explain in detail. I know that this skill will be extremely
useful to me in the future.
Before this course, I gave little importance to my choice of words. As I had said in the
beginning, I was homeschooled, therefore I did not have to write any essays. I just took the basic
English class required to graduate. This class was an eye-opener for me. I had no idea that
different words could be interpreted differently, depending on the person reading it. Professor
Collins always encouraged her students to use the most of their words. She also instilled in her
students to steer clear of the use of dead words. This meaning words that are overused and
should not be used in academic writing. In the research paper assigned this was especially
difficult because many students, including myself, were found using the exact same words
without varying our sentence structures. When one uses the same words over and over again it
could make ones paper sound repetitive and the reader could lose interest. The skill of adding to
my vocabulary could help me as well in my future career.
Throughout this semester in composition class, I was able to acquire more skills through
constructing better thesis statements, my word count, and upgrading my diction. I was content
with this course as it taught so much that I did not already know, and that I could still use now
and in the future. This experience was overall successful for me, and I would take it again if I
had the opportunity.