Personal Reflection Essay

Personal Reflection EssayThis year’s honors English class has been an eye-opener for me. Whether or not what my eyes have been opened to will prove to be essential after school is something only time can tell. But for now, in my immediate future, and for this class in particular, I have never done so much work and learned so much at the same time in my life.In the beginning of the year, I was only semi-aware of the difficulty of this class. Subconsciously (…or consciously), I think I had it in my head that I was going to “slide” right through this class, much like all the classes prior. I did not think I would do amazing, certainly not to my full potential, but I figured my basic writing skills already (and writing is a skill of mine) would carry me as far as I needed to be. I was sadly mistaken. As soon as I walked through the door of your (Mr. Gallagher’s) third floor English class, it began. It was a grueling but mostly enlightening senior year.One significant moment in terms of my growth in this class, that I can remember precisely, was during the 8-page James Joyce essay (mine only came out to 6). At first, as is the case with most things I do, I complained. I did not think such a paper was possible, especially on such a difficult reading (I guess it would not have been as difficult had I actually done all of the reading). But when I finally sat down to do it all, it did not turn out to be so bad. I actually enjoyed writing so much on an academic level. I have written a lot more fiction-wise, but fiction entails another form of writing altogether. That paper definitely set me up for other assignments, especially the research paper which, though it was longer and more involved, it was also not as stressful or grueling as a result of the work put into the James Joyce paper.Another significant moment in this year’s class was during the Olson project. This also set me up for the research paper, mostly in terms of the researching aspect. It was the most hands-on I actually got with the research, having actually traveled to Gloucester (for the first time, since I did not grow up in Massachusetts and had not even heard of the place until this year for this assignment).