I have a very distinct memory from the fifth grade of my teacher reassuring me that when I got to college, I would never have to take another math class if I didn’t want to. From that day on, I swore that I would never take math in college, and I counted down the years until I would never again have to worry about math. Flash forward seven years, and I’m a pre-engineering major taking 300 level math courses thinking I’m never going to take an English class again. Then, I double-check the engineering pre-requisites, and there it is; English 131.

I had mixed feelings coming into this class. To be honest, I was a little annoyed that I still needed writing credit because I had already taken a literature course that fall quarter that required a total of about seven essays. I felt like I had already paid my dues with writing especially because the class was about the literature of exploration so I was writing five page papers about Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus. These very topics that mere mildly interesting to me, but they were not so interesting that I enjoyed writing that many papers on them.

When I registered for this class, I consoled myself with the fact that the topic was popular culture. This topic was much more interesting to me than early European exploration, so I figured the writing process probably wouldn’t be as painful. My friends that were in other English classes with topics like liminality and home looked upon my topic with open enviousness, so I figured things could be worse.

During the second day of class when we began moving away from explaining the syllabus and delving into the meat of the class, I was impressed with the fast pace and intensity of the class. In high school, I will admit there were quite a few days in English where it was much too easy for me to doze off, but in this English 131 class I was constantly engaged. I quickly realized that I could come away with a lot from this class.

Looking back now, I can say with certainty that I did significantly improve my analytical and writing skills in this class, and my portfolio is an exemplification of this improvement. I’m leaving this class with a heightened sense of awareness of the context and audience of my writing and how to project my writing to this audience and context. I’ve also improved the incorporation of different sources in my papers in a way that supports my argument but doesn’t overshadow it. I made strides in the development of my argument and my establishment of the stakes of my topics. Finally, I gained a new reverence for the significance in the revision process, and I learned to better use peer and instructor advice to change my papers for the better. My portfolio and the showcase pieces I chose reflect my understanding and improvement in these four writing outcomes.