College Writing

At the begging of the first semester of College, it was difficult to begin with. Things were hard going from being the baby of four kids and living with them, to living with a complete stranger wasn't as easy as I expected. There was allot of bumps down the road to get through the first semester. I had to deal with transitioning from roommates and dealing with the stress of school and family all at once. My mother had gotten into a car accident during the first semester causing me to have to go home for a week and try to juggle being in a hospital room all hours of the night and try to maintain keeping my grades in order and getting the homework in. I do however agree with Hjortshoj's idea that high school does prepare you to get into and get accepted to college, however it doesn't prepare you for college. With high school you rely mainly on parents and teachers to have a structure to keep your life in order, whereas college you have to time manage everything. Whether it be eating, sleeping, studying, going to class, working or anything of that nature it's all up to you in the end.  I feel that high school should not only prepare you for time management better but it should also better prepare you for the struggles of life interfering and having to figure out everything on your own.


In the second chapter it discusses listening, reading, and writing and how they all connect to each other. You can't have a good understanding of what someone is reading without listening also. You can't write without reading and listening. In order to be a good communicator you need to be able to effectively listen to what someone is saying, but also be able to read and have a better understanding yourself in order to write. I feel that the role of the first year writing course is to better prepare students to understand that if they read for class but not listen you can't be a successful student. In order to write a paper you need to be able to have a better understanding of the reading in the text but also to be able to understand what the professors are discussing in class.