Tony Jackson Journal #1

I have always had a love-hate relationship with writing. I like to express myself and organize my thoughts with words but in school I generally never liked the prompts that I was required to write to.

From my birth until first grade my mother was a stay-at-home mom and because of this she was my original English teacher. She read to me everyday and taught me writing, reading, and basic comprehension by the time I started grade school. My parents enrolled me in private schools from Pre-K to third grade and because of the rigorous reading curriculums I began to favor reading far over writing. When I switched into the public school system in fourth grade and was exposed to daily writing assignments I was unhappy and as a result, my English grades suffered.

As a junior in high school I began to write many essays in application for college scholarships. During that process I found a new confidence and love for writing that I had not experienced before. I think the new outlook I gained from this was the result of writing about something that I truly believed in. Since that time I have become more open-minded about writing and its processes.

I did not take English 1105 here but I did get credit for it through a transferred credit from a class that I took in high school. Although that class was at a community college I still feel like this is my first true college english class. I am excited about getting back into writing because it has been over a year since my last course on the subject. My favorite types of reading material consists of almost anything non-fiction, sports related, or music related. I am an athlete, former music, and music lover so reading or writing about any of those topics almost crosses over from work into leisure for me. The one thing I really want to work on this semester is source citations within my writing. I have struggled with citing correctly before and I hope to nip that problem in the bud.

I am looking forward to this course as a whole and hope to have gained a lot from it in the end.