Reflection

Reflection

This school year of English, was a difficult, interesting and full of creativity and a life long experience for me. It was the opposite of all my other years of high school English. My teacher Mr. Gallagher was one of the hardest teachers that I have ever had. In fact I think he was the only hardest teacher I ever had. However, He made class interesting and fun to be in. He allowed me to challenge myself and taught me how to bring out my abilities and creativity in my writing skills.
At the beginning of the year I thought I would have this class in my hands but as time went by I thought I was fooling myself. I thought that I was not as talented in writing as I thought I was. I never explicated a novel or image or did blog entries. I loved writing poems and reading novels on my own. But I never hated it when teachers forced me to read because I would be the first one done with the story! I felt as reading was a way for me to escape from my stressful world. But once I started reading novels for Mr. Gallagher, my emotions and concept on reading changed. Reading and writing became more difficult to me. I saw once that I never knew even existed to me or was never in my vocabulary. I felt as though I did not be long in an honor English class. Other kids seemed a lot more smarted than I was. But finally I decided not to focus on other people achievements but to focus more on my abilities and what I had to offer to not only to my class but to myself.
I had a lot of difficulties expressing my self through my writings. I loved to read and to write but I could not keep up with Mr. Gallagher’s standards. So I decided to challenge my self even more. I paid more attention in class and I took more detailed notes. So when I went to go write my essay, it became easier and easier for me with my notes and my guideline for my writing process.
I remember my biggest challenges were writing more than three page essays. I was used to writing three to five paragraphs but I was not used to writing any essay close to four or even ten page essay. I stayed up nights after nights writing and reading quotes and passages and then later on explicating each passage.
I remember when one of the assignments took place when we read the Stranger and had to write a six page essay about comparing two passages and telling how they are alike. I never did this before. I thought to myself that I was going to fail but in fact I got a decent grade. It was not the best but it helped me realize that I could do this and that I should challenge myself even more.
As time went by and each essay page limit increased and increased, my ability to write more professional essays that a college student would write increased. I started to fall in love with English again. Class was more entertaining and more enjoyable now that I had more confidence in myself and my writing.
I want to thank Mr. Gallagher for challenging me and improving my writing ability. You helped me gain confidence in my writing and most of you helped me learn things about myself that I never thought I had or could do. Now I know that I am prepared for school next year. While everyone else in my class next year might struggle with finding their strengths and weaknesses in their writing but I will only be improving my strengths and would know where my weaknesses are. My writing will be better than it already was. So thank you for every thing.