Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Slade Pearce
Professor Batty
English 101
Confidence Is Key
Getting assigned a reflective essay isn’t the worst assignment I can get. I feel like I spend a
vast majority of my time in self-reflection, so an assignment like this just gives me an excuse to
put those thoughts down on a page and get a grade for it. I’ve also been spending a fair amount
of time thinking on my own writing recently thanks to this to class, and I’m grateful for the
opportunity to articulate my thoughts. Out of all the skills I learned in this class, there was one
lesson I value more than any other. While most might think that the basic techniques of essay
writing would rank highest, I believe that the inner confidence these skills helped me find are
paramount.
Coming into my second semester as a college student, I was a little nervous about this
english class. Before I started at Valley last fall, I had not been in school for a number of years
and I couldn’t tell you the last time I wrote anything meant to be viewed be another person,
much less for a grade. Any writing I had done was completely unstructured, so I was very
nervous I wouldn’t be able to measure up to the standard expected of me. I was very relieved
when the first few weeks of class were dedicated to the fundamentals of essay writing. I was
really worried an essay would be thrown at us from the very beginning and, since I hadn’t been
in school in so long, I thought I’d be behind from the start of the semester. Having the
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foundations of essay writing be the first topic we covered really helped relax my anxieties and
gave me all the tools to write a good essay when that time came.
When the time did come for the first essay, I was still a little nervous, but felt vastly more
prepared. Since I now had a solid technical fondation to fall back on, I was able to focus much
more of my attention on the actual writing. The first essay taught me a lot about my writing and
my writing habits. I spend a great deal of time conceptualizing my arguments and planning out
the flow of my essay, perhaps too much time. My overthinking tendencies and my personal
anxieties can be a detriment sometimes and in hindsight I realize I should have started on the
actual writing much sooner. But once I started on the actual writing, I quickly found it was much
Despite all of the paranoia I had about my writing ability, I found words came much
easier than I anticipated. Most of my concerns were in my lack of understanding essay structure,
but with that out of the way, I was able to fully focus on getting my ideas across. I still had
anxieties about the quality of my writing, but I powered through. I wrote what I believed to be an
effective and acceptable essay for the first assignment and submitted it expecting a lot of
mistakes and a grade that any perfectionist with high self standards wouldn’t be pleased with.
Imagine my surprise when the feedback was very positive. Despite all of my fears, I had written
The positive feedback I received on that essay and the elevation of my worries about
being behind in class have helped my confidence more than I would’ve imagined. When it came
time to write the second essay, I decided to trust myself. Going into that essay with confidence in
myself and a solid foundation of learning to rely upon made it far easier than I thought it would
be. I stopped second guessing myself after every sentence and if I got worried, I reviewed the
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writing habits assignments. I followed the steps taught to me and followed through with the
arguments I believed worked best. My confidence in writing has grown with every subsequent
essay and I hope that my writing has reflected that throughout the semester. I believe that having
a solid foundation of essay writing to fall back on has allowed me to grow significantly as a
writer this semester by giving me space to let my own writing abilities shine. While foundational
tools of writing are what started me down the path, I believe the confidence I found along the
way is the most important thing I learned in this class.While I expect that I will be using the
essay writing tools quite a lot in the rest of my college career, the confidence I gained will