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Chauncey Hayles
Professor Lewis
English 114B
May 6, 2014
Reflection
Over this spring semester of my freshman year, I have learned so much in my 114B
english class. It has truly taught me the fundamentals which include many techniques in writing
and the different ideologies of today. This class gave me a unique experience because it really
challenged me in a area that I am weak in. It has helped with a lot of criteria, mainly with my
essays organization skills, writing ethnographys, and my works cited MLA formatting. These
have each showed me what I need to grow in and how I can get better at writing.
This semester in Professor Lewis class has brought me to the realization of how
ideology influences our society of today. We learned what an ideology was and how there are
always more, according to each individual and there perspective on life. We then had to take that
knowledge and write about Hoodwinked! and Alices Adventures in Wonderland talking about
there different ideologies. These essays both had to have support from evidence that I got from
both fairytales. My own ideologies had to be compared to the original moral and analyzed in the
essays. This helped me explore my own ideas and made me grow in my organization, making my
writing more concrete with each revision that we had together in class. These revisions with my
partner really gave me a chance to see my mistakes and not miss the small details that I needed.
Another assignment that helped me in English was writing ethnographys. The
ethnography was a new assignment that I had only done once before. This required me to
basically observe and record what I saw in any non chain cafe or coffee place. It was pretty
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interesting because I had to bring into account not only the scenery, but the customers, the food,
and the ambiance of the cafe. It was difficult at first to think of what to write, but I learned that
taking a lot of notes really helped me get my thoughts together for my final paper. Prof. Lewis
has not only taught me how to take good notes, but also how to improve in making my papers
more organized. Even with simple MLA formatting its really easy for me to over look minor
mistakes, but it made a huge difference in my writing when we went over how to correctly cite
research or write out quotes. Especially when it came to my Lewis Carroll paper. There were so
many quotes and I had recently learned how to block quote for the first time and still keep my
paper neat and concrete.
This class has brought me a lot of insight besides just how to write. It has taught me and
made known to me that there are many ideologies out there. Some I am aware of and most I am
not. I have seen that an ideology can never be wrong because it can be according to each
individual person or a whole society. This class had very intriguing discussions based on
identities, opinions, morals, and experiments. I sometimes would even forget that this was an
english class. It has overall been a great experience and this class has offered me a lot that I
know will come in handy in my future writing. I enjoyed talking in groups and brainstorming
with my classmates. I can definitely say that my imagination and creativity has grown because of
this class. Each fairytale played a significant part to my child side and I was able to achieve
knowledge on how to analyze certain topics we went over. I will not forget my english 114B
class with Prof. Lewis, she has taught me so much and it will help me in my future year at Cal
State University, Northridge.

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