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Aaron Ellenburg

Larry Neuburger

English Comp 102

Final Exam Essay

This semester I believe I have grown a lot as a writer. From the first several assignments

I believed was going to do well in this class, I was a bit nervous writing the “I Am From” poem

because I never believed I was good at writing poetry. The fact that we were allowed to use

computers and our time in class to write our papers was a privilege I really enjoyed because we

could ask for help and edit our papers while in class and get our work done twice as fast.

Mr. Neuburger was really good at his job. He gave good instructions and spoke clearly

while giving them. He was very patient with us when we had a hard time with an assignment or

when we had difficulties with the computers or reaching deadlines for papers. He also had a

good sense of humor and was very fun to be around. I would highly recommend him for new

students next semester.

The only thing I had trouble with was using Scribd and Blogger.com. I had never even

heard of these websites before this class and I have never blogged before, the most I have ever

done on the internet was Google. It was a lengthy process, uploading our work and publishing it

in Scribd, embedding it, and uploading it to our blogs. It took some time but I finally got the

hang of it after our first research paper.

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I also had some difficulty with writing our research papers. The first problem I had was

writing our outlines. I had not written an outline before this class and had some difficulties

understanding what I was supposed to do. Once I figured that out I had some problems

formatting the computer so I could write the outline correctly. But after I solved those problems I

had no further issues with finishing my outline.

I was a bit uncomfortable writing our first research paper. In my senior year at high

school I had to write a research paper but I didn’t understand how to cite my sources properly

and ended up plagiarizing most of it. I also couldn’t remember how type in MLA format. After

listening to Mr. Neuburger and studying my handbook I had confidence that I knew how to cite

my sources. This carried into our next research paper.

Our second research paper was easier for me to write but I still had some problems. We

had to insert pictures and small text boxes of the topics we were writing and I had problems

figuring out how to do that. On top of citing the sources for our information I had to cite the

sources for our pictures as well. This took some more time to do with making sure that the

pictures were the right size and to insert the text box correctly.

The use of technology really helped me in this class. Even though I had problems getting

used to Scribd and Blogger, it still was a good educational experience that I am sure will help me

in the future. Technology has become an important part of our world and it is good to get

yourself familiar with it as much as possible. It has helped me become more familiar with how

computers work. I didn’t know I could insert pictures or text boxes in Microsoft Word or how to

use photo story. If used properly technology can greatly enhance the learning experience.
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I can’t think of much that could improve this class. The Teacher is already very good at

his job; the assignments are challenging and require students to pay attention if they want to pass

the class, the research assignments taught us how to use MLA format and how to cite our sources

properly, and using the computers for our work was very good. The only thing that caused me

any major problems was a lack of communication on my part. I need to communicate with my

teachers more if I want to keep doing well in my classes in the future