My Journey Through English 102

Where to begin? My journey through this class has been amazing. I have had my fair share of ups and downs with writing. I have never been confident about my writing, this class has helped me very much with that. I absolutely loved this class. I looked forward to each class and especially to every "Fish Bowl" to be able to express my thoughts and feeling on the material being covered. Professor Mignano-Brady's energy and passion for literature made me feel so inspired to expand my knowledge on every piece of material covered in class and to do my best to improve my writing skills as a scholar.

This class has taught me to think outside the box when I am writing and not just focus on one concept. I have more confidence in my writing now versus when i set foot in the classroom on the first day. Before, when I would write, I would only focus on the main task at hand, not realizing that sometimes that would hurt my writing in the sense that i would feel blocked and not express my thoughts. As the class progressed and writing prompts were given, the language I use in writing has improved remarkably. I have learned to use vivid language. The professor has inspired me to not just use everyday language, but expand my thinking and use scholarly language. I now use a dictionary to discover the true meaning of words and use unique words in my writing rather than just simple, everyday words. In the past I always thought that my writing was not good enough. After being in this class I have learned that my writing matters and that I can expand my knowledge to be great.

Among everything, the most important lesson i have learned and that I will take with me for the rest of my life is how to be an "active reader". Analyzing and understanding what you are reading is one of the most important things to keep in mind. To fully develop an individual's language and the way that a person thinks, you need to really understand what you are reading and not just read for fun. You need to go beyond the words and understand what the author is trying to convey to the readers. This class has taught me how to do that.

I began this class full of fear, fear that I would be unsuccessful, fear that I would be unable to reach my full potential in writing, fear that i would not do well in this class. It only took the first class with Professor Mignano-Brady's enthusiasm and motivation to make all of that fear disappear. There is a lot that I will take with me from this class, starting with that beautiful lecture about literature and ending with an equally beautiful lecture about poetry that opened my mind. All of the lessons that related to the world outside of the classroom, not only literature lectures, but life lessons. In the limited time we had this semester, I have learned that literature is such an important device for the human being. Everyone has opinions and ideas that matter and should be shared with the world. I hope to be able to use this device to transmit all my ideas to my fellow scholars. In five years I hope to be an Italian professor with at least half the passion that Professor Mignano-Brady has had in our class and has for teaching. Thank you professor for opening my mind and expanding my knowledge this semester, this will be a class and you will be a professor that I most certainly will never forget!