When I was in high school I was intimidated by English classes because I wasn’t a good writer. The subject was not my best. I dreaded days when I knew I had to write essays that were timed. Eventually I got the hang of it towards the end of my senior year but I was still worried about it because I knew that I’d have to be doing a lot of writing in college.

When college came around I was enrolled in a beginners writing class called writing one. I thought to myself, “Great, I don’t know how I’m going to do this.” As the semester rolled on and I began to write more and more I felt more confident about my writing skills. I was always intimidated by college writing but I learned that one way to overcome that fear is by constantly writing and reading. Even if the writing isn’t perfect or the readings aren’t articles in a newspaper, the fact is, you’re reading and writing to improve those skills.

My professor in Writing 10 helped me overcome my fear. I learned from him that writing isn’t just something you can crank out and expect it to be amazing. He taught me that it takes practice and the more you practice your writing will get better. There were three parts or so that he believed was part of the writing process. The first was prewriting, the second writing, and then the third step rewriting. The prewriting stage is the one that takes the longest because it is where you gather the information you need to write your paper. It’s good to give more time to the prewriting process because all the information you gather you prime your mind for the paper you’ll eventually write. After writing the paper you go through the last step of the writing process, the rewriting stage. This is the part where you crank out all the grammatical, punctuational, spelling, rules. Basically the final editing before you turn in the paper.

 Becoming a writer isn’t easy so giving it time is important. This way you aren’t turning in a half ass paper.  And it’s completely worth it in the end! J

Picking classes isn’t the hard part but deciding what classes to take so that it fits your schedule is the hard part. Every semester I meet with my advisor and she gives me a list of classes to take and from that list I’m supposed to pick at least 4 and schedule them. At first it was really hard to for me to understand how that process worked. When I first got advised for my classes I was asked all sorts of questions about placement exams and test scores that’d place me in other classes I could take. I was a bit overwhelmed. And when I first got my schedule together for my first semester I was really worried that I was going to be behind because some of the classes I was placed into were remedial classes.

 After finding out that in my junior year and finally looking over all my classes that I’ve taken so far and all the classes that will soon be in progress, I realized that I’m not behind at all. In fact it made me feel better that our majors were designed so that we finish in four years, even if I was placed into remedial classes my first semester!

 This semester it was a bit tough for me because I couldn’t decide between taking a chemistry class or a math class. I decided that it would just be best for me to take a chemistry class just because I need that class to get into higher levels of chemistry classes later on. And the math class could just wait till later. It would be my last math class anyways so I wouldn’t necessarily need to take it for any upper division math classes. And deciding all of this just made my schedule for me be a lot better. I’m actually more comfortable with it.

 I worked at Orientation over the summer and I helped a lot of students in the School Natural Sciences pick their classes. I noticed that most of them always asked me “who was the best teacher” to take and “how easy was the class?” Truth is,  classes aren’t easy in college. All professors require excellence of themselves and of their students too. Constantly working hard is the best way. So in helping those students I told them that regardless of what teacher you get, you might as well just take the class because that professor is most likely going to be teaching it next semester so get it over with now. To me I prefer things get done when they need too. But really, it’s all good because not every teacher is what you expect them to be. You either get ones you dislike or ones that are the best at what they teach and make learning fun.