Japhet Mondragon

Professor Beadle

English 115

05/9/2019

Reflection Essay

English 115 started off with a kick to the ass. Failing the first english 115 course that I

took my first semester made me more eager to do better in this semester. Going through the

excruciating pain to get up in the morning to do my essays, homework, and attend class a lot was

learned that improved my writing skills substantially. I majorly improved in analyzing the texts,

implementing the topic into my thesis, and managing my time for the better. Although I still have

much to catch up on in english this class proved very beneficial as I have already stated. Project

space, text, and media were all major players in my improvement. They provided me with very

unusual topics but as the class went on I was able to analyze these topics thoroughly and

accordingly. I usually struggle a lot with understanding what the topic wants me to write about

because of how they are always worded very confusingly.

Project space is the first project Professor Beadle presented to me and the topic proved

quite challenging to understand because of its weird wording. The topic of my essay was What

kind of space (internal and/or external) is each author focusing on? How do they suggest

transforming this space to achieve happiness? The main articles for this essay were Sonja

Lyubomirsky’s How Happy Are You and Why?, Graham Hill’s Living with Less. A Lot Less,

and David Brook’s What Suffering Does. These articles all talked about how to attain happiness

but my question for this project was what does the topic want from me. I did not know at the
time what word space meant just yet. I believed it to be something Sci-fi and that's what the topic

wanted from me but ultimately I ended with space being and action internal or external. I found

this by continually reading the topic continuously slowly understanding it. The rest then came

fairly easy to me. This is due to the fact that It is only because i was to organize them

accordingly with the thesis. The incredible help for this essay came from the Learning Resource

Center in Csun’s Oviatt Library. It was a requirement at the time but it was a very life saving

requirement because the tutor helped me restructure my essay so that it fit with my thesis

perfectly.

The most difficult project for me by far however was project text this is because I am not

the greatest reader. I read but I didn’t understand what is going on in the text. Due to this

problem My First draft was a complete and utter disaster. It had no order whatsoever and it was

everywhere. The thesis was non-existent overall it was a mess. However, in the end I was able to

understand it well enough. The great thing was that I was motivated by my professor to go to the

Learning Resource Center even though it was not a requirement this time. I needed help and they

came out and helped me redesign my entire paper. We started by focusing my thesis to the topic

that is based on the novella ​The Metamorphosis​ by Franz Kafka. My main problem was that I

needed to attach my rough draft to this thesis as well. So we salvaged parts of the rough draft and

connected them to the thesis and topic leaving out the unnecessary things. In this it was were I

learned how to see what was related to topic and what was not with ease. Once we made all these

changes io needed to figure out a nice conclusion. Conclusions are never my strong point but I

learned that it is like a summary of your essay allowing me to work easier. Making my next

project a million times easier.

 Project media was the last essay that was the easiest of all the essays to me. This is

because after all the past essays I was able to learn a lot of things that were hard to me before.

This project also motivated me more because it was about the movie Godzilla and this motivated

me to go out of my way to be better. Although the end result wasn't the best I put a lot of effort

into the essay. I wasn’t able to go to the Learning Resource Center this time around because I

had other things to worry about at the time. However, if I had more time to do what I needed to

do I would have definitely gone again because they are very helpful and they give you many

ways to look at your essay that you wouldn't think of beforehand. The main improvement I

gained in this essay was actually grabbing from the movie and putting it into my essay. I was

able to understand the movie more so it was easier to write about and how it related to the atomic

bomb. In the end I improved drastically from where I was at the beginning of the semester.

In the end I was able to use all of the new found knowledge that I gained and use it in my

final project the portfolio. English 115 helped me learn to manage my time better, analyze the

texts, use sources accordingly and how to avoid plagiarism. On top of what i just said I was also

learned how to make an outline. This helped me a lot when preparing my essays because it

helped me see what i needed to talk about in my essay as well as to form my thesis. This class

taught me how to Change my way of thinking from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.

Knowing that I need to constantly improve on what you do and not give up even though it gets

tiring. Another major component that helped my writing get better was time management this

class helped me maintain a forced schedule. Even though it sounds bad it really did help me

because I was able to reconfigure my mind to knowing there is no late work ever. Many things

provided me with a great experience and they showed me how to be a better writer.