Brooke Barnhardt
Mrs. Watson
English111 – Section 806
Narrative Essay
October 2, 2015
Opening Reflection
In colleges and universities today, students are required to take certain courses as part of their degree requirements. One such mandatory class is Freshman Writing, commonly known as English 111. Students are expected to be able to verbalize their thoughts in all classes in which they are enrolled; so being able to write effectively is a necessity! Devoting a class early in one’s college career can ensure that the requisite skills are learned and refined prior to entering into a specified course of study.
To record my writing, I own a MacBook Air, and I consider myself to be fairly computer literate. In high school, I earned Microsoft Certification…show more content… I have written on the topics of genocide and symbolism in the Scarlet Letter. Both research papers were short, 1500-2000 words, and required 7-10 sources. I know that I did well on both, but I do not remember the specific grade on these assignments. My teachers emphasized the importance of using examples to justify my thesis statements. While I enjoyed carrying out the research process once I developed my thesis, I did find formulating the thesis to be somewhat tedious. I’m terrified of plagiarism – I used annotated notes, and placed all ideas in my own words, but was still afraid I would forget a citation or use similar sentence structure when I became so entrenched in the work I was researching. I cannot tell you how many online plagiarism checkers I used to ensure that EVERYONE would be convinced my original work WAS indeed MINE and ORIGINAL. Likewise, Son of Citation Machine became my friend as I used this site for MLA assistance in citing sources. MLA is the only format I have used, and although I have used it in a number of classes, I still routinely refer to guidelines when writing a formal