Reflective Essay

This year has been my most productive year and the year I have improved the most in my grammar and writing. I remember the time we had to explicate a painting with one thousand words minimum. One, I am not an artistic person and know nothing about art and the meanings of colors, shades, styles etc. Two, one thousand words to me was a million in my mind, I was shocked to hear that we needed at least one thousand minimum. I knew this would be my toughest writing assignment yet and I stayed up all the way to twelve just looking at the painting and trying to find words to explain everything I saw. Not surprisingly, I got a bad grade on that assignment. I was very disappointed and thought I was very far behind everyone else in the class. However, I kept trying and trying to learn the deeper meanings of why an artist would paint something a certain color, why they would put characters where they were, and I read the explication paper about ten times. During third quarter, we were given another assignment almost exactly alike to the one thousand word picture essay. We had to explicate Tom Phillips’ Humament. I was scared and thought to myself I would do horribly again because writing about paintings just wasn’t my thing. However, I stayed up till one in the morning from nine at night and used everything I had learned to write about the painting. Amazingly, I got a 49/50 my best grade on an essay during the whole year.
I have improved so much on analyzing everything and improved on vocabulary and using words to explain what I have to say. In addition, I have managed to write everything in my mind very quickly so I am able to perform well during time tests. This was one of the classes I looked forward to during the day because I knew I would learn something new every time. In the beginning I hated homework from English class because I knew it would be an essay or writing assignment, however, now I realize how much those practice explications and essays helped improve my overall writing. People who had this same English Honors 12 class last year and are now and college told me that this class would be a harder English class than the college English classes and I would be absolutely ready for college after having Mr. Gallagher. I agree with every word they all said to me because I believe I have improved so much on everything because of how much practice I had and the help I got from analyzing the deeper meanings in things and being able to talk about art for the first time and actually know what I am talking about. Moreover, I learned about how to organize my thoughts and jot them down in a orderly fashion rather than write everything and make the ideas all scrambled around so they would be harder to understand. Also, thanks to the consistent writing assignments we would get weekly, I was able to become responsible and manage my time and know exactly how much time I would need to brainstorm and how long it would take me to finish the essay and pass in a good assignment. Before I use to have a standard on my work and just try to complete the work assignment, however, now I write to get the best grade I can get because I am not afraid to write my ideas down because of the confidence I gained from my improved writing.
I am astonished from reading what I wrote in the beginning of the year to what I have written now. My essay structure, organization of thoughts, explications on authors and artists, and vocabulary use has improved drastically. I believe I was able to improve this year so much more than the previous years was because I was never bored during period six. I was always on the edge of my chair with everything we would do in class because it was so exciting. That is also why I learned to appreciate my writing so much and enjoy expressing my feelings and ideas about pieces of literature art, and history.