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RUNNING HEAD: Reflective Essay

Reflective Essay
Nick Greenlees
January 6, 2015
West Career and Technical Academy

Reflective Essay

Reflective Essay
Eighteen weeks of assignments, literature, and interesting experiences and now its time
to tell you what I think of my time so far, in my English 12 Honors class. Before anything, Ill
say that during my time in this class, I have noticeably improved as a student, a reader, and
especially, a critic. Also, that the class is very well composed, thought out, and interactive
which is great because I hate it when classes are straight cut, sort of the heres your assignment,
work on it, then move onto the next kind of classes (worksheets, bookwork, etc.). So quickly
finding out that this class was not like that satisfied me very much. Now, having said that, there
are some things that I really loved as well as some things I had friction with.
Following such, I would like to start with the assignment I found issuable, our research
project. The issue I have with it did not lie in the nature of the project, but within the
requirements for both group and individual guidelines. To explain, if you were to work with a
partner, you and your partner were both responsible for ten notecards, making a total of twenty
notecards. However, if you worked individually, you were still responsible for twenty notecards.
Now, it wasnt the end of the world or anything, but I feel that if you choose to work individually
you should be responsible for less notecards, like 15 or so. In addition, this almost made it feel as
if you were being punished for working individually rather than with a partner, which Im sure
was not the intention. Now, as far as the rest of the assignment went, I really appreciated the
skills, knowledge, and experience it gave me as I expect an immense amount of research projects
in my upcoming years of school.
Like most students who are assigned dialectical journals, I am not the biggest fan. Yet, I
do recognize that dialectical journals offer valiant reading comprehensive skills and are a great
learning/teaching experience, when done correctly. In theory, dialectical journals are done over
the course of a few weeks; each journal is completed while reading the novel, thereby giving

Reflective Essay

your opinion on the quote as you read it without any further knowledge of the novel. However,
for most students, that is not the case. Most students will either wait until the last few days to
read their novel and then pick quotes upon finishing the novel or, they will simply scavenge
quotes off the internet and spark notes their novel. This obviously isnt the assignments fault but
simply lies in the nature of the average high-school students stature. However, I feel as if the
amount of students who do this assignment incorrectly could be significantly lowered with a few
simple changes. To explain, since the amount of journals assigned is large, it entices most
students to put it off until the last couple of days. So if the amount of journals assigned was
lowered by about five or so, it would probably increase the number of people who do the
assignment correctly and lower the amount of people who procrastinate. In addition, if more
journal progress checks were added, such as a weekly check, then people would almost be forced
to do the assignment correctly. Having done the dialectical journals correctly during my senior
year, I now understand how much easier and less stressful they are when you do them correctly.
All in all, even though more journal progress checks would likely irritate some students, I think
they would actually really appreciate it in the long run.
Now that thats out of the way, I would like to talk about my favorite assignment from
the time Ive had this class the satire poem. I never, ever, in a million years would have
thought Id be picking a poetry assignment as my favorite assignment of the semester, but I am.
To explain, I never was nor am I very fond of poetry, it is very much an area I am either very
dissatisfied with, or at best, just okay with. This poetry assignment, however, was very unique
and enjoyable for me, and Im not exactly sure why. Ive pondered it for a while now and have
come up with very little. Maybe its simply because I'm very satisfied/proud of the poem I came
up with or maybe because it challenged me to think outside the norm; the rhyming scheme and

Reflective Essay

vernacular required was a real trope for me and required a few hours of thinking. And because of
the challenge associated with it, when I was finally done with the poem, I felt remarkable. I kept
reading it over and over again, astounded with what I had written from the title to the rhyme
scheme, I loved it. Especially because when the poem was assigned I was sure mine would
amount to sub-par gibberish, but I proved myself wrong, and perhaps thats why I loved this
assignment so much. Altogether, after eighteen weeks of English 12 Honors, its had its up and
its downs, but overall its been a very enjoyable class.