Everyone has a writing journey, personally for me when I am writing an essay, I struggle a lot because I want to make sense and use better vocabulary words. The reason why it’s hard for me to write essays and make sense is that English is not my first language, Nepali is. In addition to going into college, I was nervous because I knew we had to write a lot of essays there. The first class I had to write essays was in FIQWS, it was confusing at first because I never heard about literacy, exploratory, and critical essay. As a matter of fact, I found out about the Writing Center at our school. I will continue to go there because it helped me a lot with my essays. Not to mention, I was in ESL for about 10 years since I started school here. Most importantly, you have to know that you are not alone in this journey. Writing is a journey, sometimes the journey is the adventure and not the target.

Compared to the first essay, which was my Literacy one, this one was easier than the other essays I wrote in this class. It was easy to talk about it because I had a lot of things to say since I was talking about my writing journey. “I started school here in 2006 in the 1st grade. Though it was hard for me to interact with people, teachers helped me a lot,” which I improved a lot since the 1st grade. I usually asked my teachers for extra help because I was put in an ESL class. It was a hard transition because in Nepal they didn’t teach us any English, so learning a different language was really hard and confusing. However, this Literacy essay was easier than the other ones because it was the first essay for this class. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know what an MLA format was because I didn’t use it during high school, so that was something new for me. Furthermore, I learned we have to use a lot of quotations for any essays. This essay was easy because I knew what to write since it was about me. “I like to write because it helps me remember stuff and things I would love to do, such as visiting new countries and I also enjoy writing about my favorite food,” basically I only like to write about things I’m interested in. Turns out I didn’t get the grade I was expecting to and only got 35/50. For that reason, I wanted to push myself to write better for the next essay but turns out it’s a harder topic to write about.

In that case, my second essay was the Exploratory one which consists of talking about a topic based on the book we were reading for our other FIQWS class. Therefore, the topic that I picked was about 19th-century gender conventions in Russia and the strict social code of behavior that was required of a 19th-century nobleman or woman. For this reason, this essay was hard because I never did it before, so it was good learning something new. I learned how to work cite my resources and do the MLA format. However, we did such a thing called a peer review, so we printed out two or more copies of our essay and our peers proofread it for us. While they were fixing my essay, they found a lot of mistakes, which I was happy because it’s better to fix something than handing it to your professor as your final paper. As a matter of fact, my peer told me I didn’t have a clear thesis, so I wrote my thesis again if they never told me I would’ve never seen it. That was the good thing about a peer review. Similarly, everyone enjoyed it. At the same time, this was a hard essay for me especially because I had to get three secondary sources to support my claim, two sources from CCNY library, and one 19th century Russian literacy text from the class. Due to this paper, I went to the writing center because my professors told me if I go there we get extra points. So, I had to go because if anything is extra credit I have to do it. When I went there, I didn’t wanna leave from there because they were helping me so much and we had only 50 minutes to fix our writing. After that first appointment, I saw a change in my writing and I wanted to go back ever since that. One bad thing about me is that when I’m writing an essay, I can’t write a lot because I feel like I start to not make sense and this was 1,400 words requirement. I was glad I reached this requirement because that’s one thing I struggle with. But other than that, this was a long process for me and I struggles a lot, but I got it done. As a result, I didn’t get a grade I was hoping for, but I still hand it in and got a grade better than a zero.

In order of the last essay which was the Critical Analysis, it consists of talking about the Exploratory one but in a larger context. On the positive side, I thought we were done talking about the previous essay, but we had to expand our essay for this one. In fact, the word count requirement was 2,200-2,300. When I saw that, I got nervous because if I couldn’t even pass 1,400 words for the Exploratory one; I knew 2,200 words would be hard for me. In that case, I went to the writing center again to gain extra credit and to fix my writing. I was really happy because my professor extended the due date, so I had more time to fix my essay. Even though I had extra time, I still didn’t meet the 2,200-word requirements. It was hard for me to relate it to the book that we were reading in class. According to this paper, I had to use at least five secondary sources from CCNY and one literacy text from our FIQWS class. Therefore, we had to cite wherever we got it from. One thing I’m lacking is using quotations, so I have to start quoting where I get it from. Furthermore, my professor told me to use the Purdue Online Writing Lab; it’s so helpful because it has examples of every single thing for writing. As a matter of fact, we did peer review during class and I found a lot of mistakes. I read my peers essay and they did it in a correct way. Then, after that, I got an idea of it and fixed my essay. I believe my thesis statement is not that good because it is opinionated, but it’s not stated clearly, that’s what I think. In my opinion, I feel like my writing has grown since the first essay I did because I went to the writing center. Therefore, it had changed my writing style and I learned how to do the MLA format.

Learning to read, write, and speak English was a hard process since I started school in 2006. The first thing to remember was that the teachers were really patient with me since I didn’t know any English. I had to meet up with my teachers every day after school because I wanted to improve my English. Nepali which is my language is very different from English. I had a hard time learning, so they put me into ESL class. Over time, I learned how to write in English and I never gave up. ESL program is settled to contribute students with the vocabulary and grammatical organization needed for both school performance and everyday living. Fast forward to 2018, I’m still working hard to get my writing better every day. I got out of ESL class and I’m taking regular classes without the ESL students. Even though I don’t get extra help, I still go to my teachers to ask whenever I need help. Writing is a journey, sometimes the journey is the adventure and not the target. The key to success is to never give up no matter how hard it is because you wanna do something and finish it till the end.

During my high school year, my writing was really bad compared to now because there was no writing center in my high school. My teachers didn’t help me that much because on my senior year I got out of ESL class. So, I didn’t have extra help anymore, but my writing was still bad. While I was writing my college essay, it was a hard time for me because no one helped me and I just wrote whatever came on my mind. Surprisingly, we had an event called iMentor and one of my mentor really helped me with the grammars and word choice. I was really happy my school provided an event called iMentor because it helped out a lot of people with their essays.

From the beginning of my FIQWS class, we had a journal and we could write anything in our journal, but most of the time, our professor gave us a topic and we had to answer it. At the end of the semester, she would collect it to see if we did all of the topics or not and I got a pretty good score, so I was happy. Those journal entries helped me a lot with my writing because I feel like if I keep writing; my writing will get so much better every time. One good thing about me is that I don’t get scared asking for a lot of questions if I’m having trouble with it.

As, I sit back and reflect upon my life, and who I have become today, I must start with family history. Not many people would say that a bleeding disorder is an American dream, but for me, it was the start of a journey toward my American dream. Eleven years ago in Nepal, I was diagnosed with hemophilia when my nose started to bleed profusely. After a few months of no progression, the Indian doctors told us that America was the only place with a cure.  So we flew all the way to America which was very far; the airplane ride was almost 14 hours. As my family and I were on our way to America, I was really scared to fly because I never experienced flying before. My parents sacrificed the life they had in Nepal and immigrated to America in 2006 hoping for a cure. America was the place where dreams come true.

Under those circumstances, I believe I have come a long way because I know how I wrote before and how I write now. Therefore, I did progress, but I still need to keep on progressing every time. I have to keep getting better and better.

One important thing I learned from my first semester is that I gotta start writing my essay earlier because one bad thing about me is that I wait until the last minute. I gotta remind myself this is not high school anymore. One goal for me is whenever I get an essay, I should start outlining and think on how to do it. Therefore, I should go to my professor’s office hour to ask for help from the beginning because people will come at the end to ask questions, so I’m going to try to be the first one. Another bad thing about me is that whenever I get an assignment, I don’t read word for word, I usually scheme it. During my FIQWS class, one time we went to the CCNY library to find resources for articles or books. That lesson really helped me because before I used to use only Google to find my resources. I thought that was the only way, but I found out there are so many databases to find your resources for your essays.

After all, this FIQWS class was very good for me because I feel like I should start my first semester in college with a writing course since I have to write so many hard essays later in the semester. Not to mention, at the beginning of the semester, I was kinda nervous to take this class because I thought I wasn’t good enough for the writing essay part. As time went on, I’m very glad I chose this because I learned so many ways to fix my writing and writing center really blessed me. Typically, I struggle the most on making transitions from one paragraph to the next.  It takes a lot of time for me to be focused when writing. After many years of bad writing, I have learned to accept criticism and use it in bettering my writing. As long as I’m in this school, I’ll always go to the writing center for help. Personally, according to my major, I don’t think writing a lot is important since my major is business management. But, I never know because writing is all over the place, so I have to start now or it’s going to be too late. Overall, I’m very happy I took this FIQWS Russian Romance class because it was really interesting since I never took a class like this.