Reflective Case

My Academic Journey

Throughout my courses I was not expecting my English class to be one of the most insightful and interesting classes that I have ever taken. Nevertheless, over the years I have learned to expect the unexpected and that truth held to its own with this course. This class has taught me to expand my writing skills in ways that I have never imagined. Before I entered this class I considered myself a good writer, but what I did not realize was I gave a bunch of detail in unnecessary places and not enough where I needed too which was leading off topic. In my other English classes I would never take the time to read and edit any if my essays before submitting them in for a grade. I would wait until the last minute and get by with the fact that my writing skills were good enough for a passing grade. Once I started college and enrolled into English 5A and 5B I realized procrastination was no longer an option. I'm going to have to put multiple hours of time into each assignment making sure it was the best it could be. With the help of classmates, my professor, and the tutors at the writing center they helped me improved my writing. The main struggles I had were staying on topic, narrowing down my ideas and revising and editing my essay before submitting for a final grade.

For the first essay of this course was the profile essay I was assigned to write an essay about one person who is currently working in [or is a member of] a food-related culture [job/career/organization/trend] and addresses a larger issue within that person's culture, I will need to describe and explain a unique aspect of that person's role within his/her food-related culture. I chose to do this essay on my boss Ricky Serrano who is the manager at Fresno State's Starbucks in the Henery Madden Library. This essay to me I though was very interesting to write about because I knew a lot about Starbucks. My major concerns I had with this essay was if I did a good job describing Ricky's unique aspect within his food culture, I felt I had so many ideas that my essay was unorganized and did not flow together, and I had very hard time beginning my this essay I was concerned that my introduction had too much background information. One strategy I used to help improve my writing was I made an appointment at the Writing Center and I met up with Nancy and she helped me revise my essay. She read over my essay and she gave me some advice, she told me that the information I include in my essay was off topic and when a reader reads over my essay they will think that I'm referring to Starbucks and not Ricky in general. I understood what she was talking about because all the work that Ricky does in order for the store to stay in business it's all done hands on in the actual Starbucks store itself with all the staff workers. She advised that I mentioned all the "behind the scenes" that Ricky does