At the beginning of the semester, I was completely devastated that I had to take another English class. Although I did well in English during high school, it was not my strong suit. I felt that my writing lacked and I didn’t know the proper ways to write for a college level class. After finishing up my Project 3 presentation, revising my Project 2 research paper, and completing my Wix website, I am extremely confident in my abilities because of taking this class at the Honors level.

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            On the first couple of weeks of school, the class was quiet, not participating, and shy. I found myself not wanting to answer because I felt like I was going to get the answer wrong, instead of answering what I think and learning from my mistakes. Mat made the entire class extremely comfortable with making mistakes and learning from them, just as he implemented in all of our projects throughout the semester.

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            During my first conference with Mat, we met at the Sweet Shop and discussed my topic, the content, and the format I was pursuing. I was writing about my involvement in the IB program, as well as my high school as a whole. Mat skimmed my essay and gave me helpful feedback for what to improve, and how to continue to write the rest of the paper. After writing this paper and completing this project, I became more confident in written and was ready to start planning for Project 2. I received an 85% on my Project 1.

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            Project 2 was a completely different story. Hurricane Irma decided to come at the time where the class was finishing up Project 1 and transitioning to Project 2. We missed a week of school, as well as a week of ENC where we would have been introduced the to project. I came up with the idea to research the Executive Board of the sorority I am in, and I ran with it. I wrote a proposal, interviewed a member of the board, and had a conference with Mat. After my conference, I was confident in my work and didn’t think I needed to put to much thought into the project, until I got my grade back for my first draft. It was a 50% and I was freaking out. I didn’t know how I could have gone from a good conference to a terrible grade. I emailed Mat, countless times, and he made me less stressed and confident that I was going to be able to fix the project and achieve the grade that I desire. I met with him at the Sweet Shop again, and we restructured my project, and incorporated more analysis. I sent Mat the revised draft of my Project 2 research paper and received higher than the grade I was aiming for (88%). I couldn’t have revised the paper, been less stressed, and completed it without the help of Mat.

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            Project 3 was a little trickier for me about Greek life at FSU was suspended after the death of a pledge at the beginning of November. I had to find ways to express my message of the importance of leadership, without breaking the rules within the suspension. I decided on writing a letter to the President of Panhellenic, writing a Thank You Card to the Executive Board member that I interviewed, and I made a poster to hang up in the house with tips about how to achieve these leadership skills.

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            Lastly, the blogs we read and wrote about were very beneficial and intriguing during the semester. I was able to read other students opinions and hear about the blogs while a student was leading the discussion each day in class. The mini-presentation I did was about the Las Vegas shooting during the Jason Aldean concert, where it hit home because my parents were there only a weekend before the shooting happened. Lastly, when I lead discussion I talked about a blog post and incorporated the opinions of other students, as well as the genres they saw within the reading.

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            All together, I really enjoyed being in this ENC 2135 class, and I believe it was very beneficial to have less than 25 people in the class so Mat was able to pay attention to each individual student, and spend time/work with them if they needed extra help. He was always willing to help each student and made us all extremely calm while writing a paper we were all unfamiliar with.