Looking back on my experience with English 101, I have come to the conclusion that I learned many new things that improved my writing skills. I learned some new techniques that improved my way of approaching an essay. I learned all about rhetorical appeals and how to apply them in my writing and how to look for them in an essay written by an author. I also learned how to argue both sides of an argument, how to look for reliable sources, and how to properly cite and locate the author of the essay. I feel like I have become a better writer and my improved writing skills show in every essay. When I first signed up for English 101 at Soar, I thought it was more of a reading and comprehension class instead of a writing class. On August 19, the first day of class, I learned that this class was the opposite of what I thought and it made me very nervous. I have never had to write so many long essays in a short amount of time. When I first entered the classroom I saw myself as a writer who needed a lot of work. I knew my writing needed work because of my high school English teachers, they once told me my writing needed a lot of work and wasn't college material. This statement became reality once I received my first essay grade and feedback from my professor. I was still stuck in the five-paragraph high school mentality and wasn't sure how to write a clear thesis. For example, in my first essay I didn't have a clear thesis because I had only been briefly taught how to write one in my senior year of high school. I had no idea what I was going to do or how I was going to pass this course. Throughout the semester, I've learned about all the different resources offered here on campus... middle of a paper... ....more for myself. For example, I provided more details about my parents' divorce and how I felt, instead of stating how most children felt after and during the divorce, as I had done in my first draft. I also changed my picture to a picture that showed my family instead of using the picture I first found on Google, which showed a girl looking out the window while it was raining. I found my second essay, The Day That Changed Everything, to be the easiest essay to write and revise. I thought this was the simplest because I felt I had a good story to tell with lots of little details that could be added to make the essay stronger. A strength I have seen in myself as I enter college is being able to understand and think critically about an essay/article I read. However, after taking English 101, I learned that this is a strength of mine as well as a weakness of mine.