Molina 1

Molina Josselyn

Professor Batty

English 101

27 May 2017

Reflective Essay

This semester has been stressful, but it was also a lot of fun because we got to do many

different things. Joining Puente was a good decision I made because this program helped me a

lot, I don't think I would have done that good in my classes if it wasn't because I was in Puente.

Also being my first year in college was even scarier because there is so much pressure from

everybody around you. One subject I have always had trouble with is English because it's my

second language, I have always struggled. Passing my English classes has always been a

challenge for me, but somehow I seem to do good. This semester I took English 101 with

Professor Batty, it was hard because we learned a lot of new things. We learned how to do a

Visual Rhetoric Essay, Ethnographic Essay, and a Literary Analysis Essay. Before learning what

these essays were about, I had no idea how was I even going to do them, and I felt like I was not

going to be able to do it. I was able to get through the whole semester on my own, but I know if I

had asked for help I would have received that helped from my professor.

The first thing we learned to do in English class was a Visual Rhetoric Essay. When I

first heard the name I was like what is that because like I mentioned before English is not my

first language. A Visual Rhetoric Essay is where you look at a painting or any art and analyze it.

What we did with this was that we had to choose an image and analyze the painting. We had to

make an educated guess of why the painter chose the colors he/she did. Also, the painting had to
 Molina 2

have a political issue, and it had to be related to the Latino culture/community. In the essay, we

had to describe every single detail of the painting and how it related to our culture. I think this

essay was hard for me because of the painting that I chose it wasn't specific to the Latino culture,

but I still try to do it in a way that it explain how it was related to Latinos.

After learning the about the Visual Rhetoric Essay, the Ethnographic Essay came, which

from my part I thought it was the easiest essay of all three that we had to do. For this essay, we

had to choose a place and just focus on that one place. The place that we had to choose was one

that made an impact for the Latino community or one that was related to the Latino culture. Once

we had the place that we were going to talk about we had to go to that place for at least 30

minutes and stay there and observe everything around us. We had to take a look at how was the

architecture of the place, the people who visited, literary just observe everything and write it

down on a sheet of paper because the observations were going to help us for the essay. I had a lot

of fun doing this essay, and I'm glad we had the opportunity to do it.

The last essay we had to do was the Literary Essay, which was the hardest essay for me.

For this essay, we had read a book before doing it the book was called "Still Water Saints." To

do this essay, we had to choose a character from the book and analyze this character but not only

analyze it we also had to explain why they were saintlike. We also had to look for sources for

this essay, I mean we had to do it for all essay. For this one, it was hard to incorporate the

sources into the essays, and they had to relate to the topic of the paragraph. I just had a hard time

with this essay, but I did it.

In conclusion, in this class, I learned many new things not only how to write different

types of essays, but I thought this was the main thing or the most important thing I'm taking
 Molina 3

away from the class. This class really helped me with my English; I think my writing skills got

better because I had always struggled with that. This class helped me get prepared for the other

English classes I will be taking in the future. I am Thankful that I got a professor that was nice

and understanding with all of us.