During my first semester at CCNY, many  feelings, thoughts and memories passed through my mind, as well as expectatives, illusions and challenges toward this new life’s stage. From all my classes I am taking a lesson, satisfaccion and frustration, this just leads me to improve every semester with the goal of  building my best student version and in the future be able to give advice to others that would be in my current position.

Autonomy, this can be the word that best describes my favorite lesson from FIQWS 10108 and 10100. Initially, this course gave me a lot of anxiety, because as a English Learner student, I felt this was a  challenge for me, as even though I studied at a bilingual school in Colombia, it is a fact that my language was not going to be as fluent as the rest of my classmates. Interpreting these classes as a challenge, impulse me to try harder every time and show myself that I always can. I have to say that at the beginning of the semester my grades were really bad. I was having trouble by following the prompt as I was getting confused and ended up by doing something incorrect or completely different from the instruction that was given. I felt really frustrated since even though I was trying really hard to pass the class and meet the standards assigned, I was not able to do it, to the point that I was seriously thinking about dropping out of the class and maybe trying again the next semester, where my english skills hopefully will be improved. However, I talked to my mom about this struggle, she made me realize that in life many challenging situations would come in my way, but I am not going to be able to drop out of them. I remember well when she said to go for the triumph even if I have to pass through the failure first. 

I decided to talk to my professors about the issues that I was having in my reading and writing skills, they offered me to assist with tutoring and their office hours, and I can say that was really helpful. They really offered me the tools and I used them to improve, and step by step I was committing less mistakes, my writing was being more understandable and coherent, together with the fact that the ideas that I was trying to express were well organized and sustained with evidence just like quotes. Moreover, I began to explore and analyze the stories so I was able to  identify  the adequate quotes that will sustain my arguments, just like I did on my Critical Research paper. The time management was playing an important role in this class, so although I was working, I was forced to find a manner to make my homeworks on time to identify the mistakes and handle a professional work. Now that I have done it for the past five weeks, I can tell that this can be a strong reason why at the beginning my grades were not the best.

I began to improve my grades and my anxiety did not disappear but it was not as frequent as the beginning. I learned multiple rhetoric techniques and I can say that by doing the peer reviews I found out of mistakes that I did not notice when I first wrote my essays, I hope any of my peer review comments were useful to my classmates too in the same manner their comments helped me to grow.

Lastly, I would like to recognize not only what the course helped me, but how the professors did, I consider their help was fundamental in this process. I am really glad and happy that I reached most of the goals that I was assigned in these courses and the way that I decided to keep going and not just leave. Now I am able to use MLA citation, write coherently, identify grammatical mistakes, and analyze texts with no problem. I actually created a mind map (as it was taught during the class) for writing this self-assessment as I wanted my ideas to be well presented and understandable for the readers, and even though my writing is not perfect yet, I will be working on it since I wanted to keep going on this learner process that I just started.   

During my first semester at CCNY, many  feelings, thoughts and memories passed through my mind, as well as expectatives, illusions and challenges toward this new life’s stage. From all my classes I am taking a lesson, satisfaccion and frustration, this just leads me to improve every semester with the goal of  building my best student version and in the future be able to give advice to others that would be in my current position.

Autonomy, this can be the word that best describes my favorite lesson from FIQWS 10108 and 10100. Initially, this course gave me a lot of anxiety, because as a English Learner student, I felt this was a  challenge for me, as even though I studied at a bilingual school in Colombia, it is a fact that my language was not going to be as fluent as the rest of my classmates. Interpreting these classes as a challenge, impulse me to try harder every time and show myself that I always can. I have to say that at the beginning of the semester my grades were really bad. I was having trouble by following the prompt as I was getting confused and ended up by doing something incorrect or completely different from the instruction that was given. I felt really frustrated since even though I was trying really hard to pass the class and meet the standards assigned, I was not able to do it, to the point that I was seriously thinking about dropping out of the class and maybe trying again the next semester, where my english skills hopefully will be improved. However, I talked to my mom about this struggle, she made me realize that in life many challenging situations would come in my way, but I am not going to be able to drop out of them. I remember well when she said to go for the triumph even if I have to pass through the failure first. 

I decided to talk to my professors about the issues that I was having in my reading and writing skills, they offered me to assist with tutoring and their office hours, and I can say that was really helpful. They really offered me the tools and I used them to improve, and step by step I was committing less mistakes, my writing was being more understandable and coherent, together with the fact that the ideas that I was trying to express were well organized and sustained with evidence just like quotes. Moreover, I began to explore and analyze the stories so I was able to  identify  the adequate quotes that will sustain my arguments, just like I did on my Critical Research paper. The time management was playing an important role in this class, so although I was working, I was forced to find a manner to make my homeworks on time to identify the mistakes and handle a professional work. Now that I have done it for the past five weeks, I can tell that this can be a strong reason why at the beginning my grades were not the best.

I began to improve my grades and my anxiety did not disappear but it was not as frequent as the beginning. I learned multiple rhetoric techniques and I can say that by doing the peer reviews I found out of mistakes that I did not notice when I first wrote my essays, I hope any of my peer review comments were useful to my classmates too in the same manner their comments helped me to grow.

Lastly, I would like to recognize not only what the course helped me, but how the professors did, I consider their help was fundamental in this process. I am really glad and happy that I reached most of the goals that I was assigned in these courses and the way that I decided to keep going and not just leave. Now I am able to use MLA citation, write coherently, identify grammatical mistakes, and analyze texts with no problem. I actually created a mind map (as it was taught during the class) for writing this self-assessment as I wanted my ideas to be well presented and understandable for the readers, and even though my writing is not perfect yet, I will be working on it since I wanted to keep going on this learner process that I just started.   

During my first semester at CCNY, many  feelings, thoughts and memories passed through my mind, as well as expectatives, illusions and challenges toward this new life’s stage. From all my classes I am taking a lesson, satisfaccion and frustration, this just leads me to improve every semester with the goal of  building my best student version and in the future be able to give advice to others that would be in my current position.

Autonomy, this can be the word that best describes my favorite lesson from FIQWS 10108 and 10100. Initially, this course gave me a lot of anxiety, because as a English Learner student, I felt this was a  challenge for me, as even though I studied at a bilingual school in Colombia, it is a fact that my language was not going to be as fluent as the rest of my classmates. Interpreting these classes as a challenge, impulse me to try harder every time and show myself that I always can. I have to say that at the beginning of the semester my grades were really bad. I was having trouble by following the prompt as I was getting confused and ended up by doing something incorrect or completely different from the instruction that was given. I felt really frustrated since even though I was trying really hard to pass the class and meet the standards assigned, I was not able to do it, to the point that I was seriously thinking about dropping out of the class and maybe trying again the next semester, where my english skills hopefully will be improved. However, I talked to my mom about this struggle, she made me realize that in life many challenging situations would come in my way, but I am not going to be able to drop out of them. I remember well when she said to go for the triumph even if I have to pass through the failure first. 

I decided to talk to my professors about the issues that I was having in my reading and writing skills, they offered me to assist with tutoring and their office hours, and I can say that was really helpful. They really offered me the tools and I used them to improve, and step by step I was committing less mistakes, my writing was being more understandable and coherent, together with the fact that the ideas that I was trying to express were well organized and sustained with evidence just like quotes. Moreover, I began to explore and analyze the stories so I was able to  identify  the adequate quotes that will sustain my arguments, just like I did on my Critical Research paper. The time management was playing an important role in this class, so although I was working, I was forced to find a manner to make my homeworks on time to identify the mistakes and handle a professional work. Now that I have done it for the past five weeks, I can tell that this can be a strong reason why at the beginning my grades were not the best.

I began to improve my grades and my anxiety did not disappear but it was not as frequent as the beginning. I learned multiple rhetoric techniques and I can say that by doing the peer reviews I found out of mistakes that I did not notice when I first wrote my essays, I hope any of my peer review comments were useful to my classmates too in the same manner their comments helped me to grow.

Lastly, I would like to recognize not only what the course  helped me, but how the professors did, I consider their help was fundamental in this process. I am really glad and happy that I reached most of the goals that I was assigned in these courses, and the way that I decided to keep going and not just leave. Now I am able to use MLA citation, write coherently, identify grammatical mistakes and analyze texts  with no problem. I actually created a mind map (as it was teached during the class) for writing this self assessment as I wanted my ideas to be well presented  and understandable for the readers, and even though my writing is not perfect yet, I will be working on it since I wanted to keep going on this learner process that I just started.