Reflection

Elizabeth Honeycutt
Reflections
English-111-45

Taking English 111 with Mr. Gaspero was a fun experience and for my first college English in college, I vastly enjoyed it. I’ve always been interested in English but for all my previous teachers trying to scare their students claiming college is nothing but work and made it seem a lot worse than it was. Mr. Gaspero made the transition from high school English to College simple, things we’re due on time and he was a fair critic. The class itself was enjoyable; I never had the chance to watch YouTube videos in class or did that much outside reading. I enjoyed the class and recommend the class to any new coming students who don’t mind heavy sarcasm for stupid questions.

Going into the class I thought there would be essays every day, reading assignments from huge text books just like my teachers in high school told us. There was a lot of reading online but mostly it was entertaining, and we had a lot of choice with essays. I didn’t care much for our argument paper just because I couldn’t be creative to pick an interesting topic, but it would’ve been enjoyable if I had. Most of our papers were easy to do if you took the time out and got them in on time. In my opinion the hardest thing we did all semester would have been the argument paper but the teacher would always take questions if he hadn’t already answered them then you would get a look and sarcastic reply. Mostly in the beginning there would be papers on black board we had to read and print out before the class so we could discuss them in class. Often the course calendar would be messed up so we would jump around a lot.

Most of other students wouldn’t read the assignments so the discussions would rarely have much input into them. For the days students did not bring materials to class there would be no point for them to come and on peer critique day the teacher would tell them to leave. It was a fair class with reasonable expectations; the teacher asked for paper at a reasonable time and would constantly remind students before they were due. Most of the papers were easy and didn’t require a lot just time and effort. I liked “What made you the person you are” essay the most, where were had to incorporate pathos, egos and logos into our paper. It made me think deeper than any of the other assignments and try to figure out what made me into the person I am today because before I had never even thought about it. The class is different but the same, the same essays and requirements but Mr. Gaspero incorporate You Tube videos and Bruce Springsteen into it to make it less dull.

I would recommend this class to anyone who enjoys English and likes to read material that they never thought they would. Mr. Gaspero is an awesome teacher, even though sometimes he does jump around a lot or forgets the reading assignments. He warns the students in the very beginning of the semester that if they ask dumb questions that they will receive sarcastic replies. I liked the fact that he used blogs for three of the assignments, I blog a lot so it made a first that teachers encourage it. We had a lot of discussions in his class and he always tried to get everyone to participate and even if something completely stupid was said he wouldn’t call it out. He was one of my teachers that was more entertaining and would keep people guessing. By guessing I mean we would try to see if we were actually doing things on the course calendar.

All in all the class was fun, I would recommend to anyone taking English 111 it’s a fair class with interesting topics. The class is a good transition into college because not a lot changes just more effort is required as well as time. There is a lot of freedom of choice on what you want to write about in the class with can begin to make students have a chance of creativity. I’m glad I took this class and I believe it has prepared me for English 112 as well as made me more creative in my writing. So thank you Mr. Gaspero, I’m sorry you had to read my horrible essays, hopefully they got better.