Only The Beginning

Hello friends! My name is Leslie Carrillo and I am from Los Angeles, California. I am currently a first year student at the University of California, Irvine. I am undeclared as of right now but I plan to major in Chemistry. My dream career is to become a physician assistant.

Last Writing Course

The class I took before this one was in high school. Writing/ English has never been my strongest subject in school, therefore, I took regular English classes all four years of high school. To be quite honest, I am a bit nervous about this class but if there is one thing I have learned from my english classes in high school is that procrastinating will do me no good. One thing that helped me to improve my writing was to do one paragraph each day. This way, I spilt my work over a period of time and wasn't rushing the day before trying to gather information and start an essay from scratch. The main focus of my senior writing class was reading short stories. From this, I learned how to annotate. I will be using my reading skills in Writing 39A to help me understand texts which will benefit my writing.

Self Assessment

As said previously, writing has never been my strongest subject. As a matter of fact, it was something I used to struggle with so my mom put me in tutoring. One of my biggest weaknesses is I don't know how to make my essays flow. I struggle ending/ starting a paragraph because I need to work on transitions. Sometimes I make an outline before I start writing to help me form my paragraphs better. This has helped my essays to sound less awkward. However, an area I excel in is being curious. Being curious has helped me in my writing because I find that the more interested I am in a subject, the better and more interesting I make my writing. The more curious I am the more research I want to do. Therefore, the more information I gather the stronger my points/ arguments will turn out.

Taking the Language and Grammar Diagnostic made me realize that I really need to review some basic concepts. For example, something I had trouble with was identifying which sentence had the best punctuation. Although, I did really well with commas. Reading the sentences out-loud helped me to identify where commas go.

Course Elements of the Course

In the syllabus, the professor provides students with some useful tips to succeed in Writing 39A. For example, the professor suggests to be curious about our course texts. To make our writing better, we should read a lot about our topic, learn to understand a text, and perhaps ask questions. The professor shares some services that can help us in our classes. Above all, it is important to expect to work 12+ hours each week working on assignments for this class.

Students are also provided with course objectives. One objective that sticks out to me is: "feel confident of your reading accuracy." Many times I tend to doubt my skills so this quarter, I want to work on being more confident in what I am capable of doing. The rest of the objectives basically will help each student to become better writers by being curious, open minded, and engaged.

A grade contract is given to students at the beginning of the class. In the contract, students are told that a B is guaranteed IF the bare minimum is done in the class. This includes attending class, turning assignments in on time, conferencing with the professor, etc. If a student would like to earn higher than a B, there are extra credit opportunities throughout the quarter, as well as giving very thoughtful responses will give a student an extra point for assignments.

With that said, thank you for reading my blog! Have a wonderful day.

- Leslie Gabriella