Reflective Essay
After taking this class a second time, it felt nerve-wracking that I would not pass compared to the first time. However, the reason for this is I felt I didn’t have the writing skills to pass the class. The thing about this second time is I was able to interact with Professor Hammett in person instead of on a screen. Taking the class in person made it easier to understand how to improve my writing skills. Especially learning the APA format for the projects and assignments in the class. Two major projects were written in the class to help improve my writing skills. Writing about sex crimes in South Korea as a social epidemic made it easier to understand APA in class.
My final topic was chosen from a podcast called Rotten Mango on YouTube that talks about true crime around the world. Creating a focus on this topic was hard, especially an essay in APA. There was plenty of information that I would not be able to fit into a single college essay. I needed help rephrasing sentences, having a better flow in my writing, and brainstorming how to organize my body paragraphs. Professor Hammett was there and able to give live feedback as I was there asking for help. Established from this was the confidence I needed to draft my essays. This intertwines also with citing and block citing in APA as well.
Assumptions I had for the first time using APA in my essays were that every citation needed to be cited the same way even if it was the same in a body paragraph. As one would do in MLA, which I was very wrong about. For instance, if certain words or phrases are cited in the same sentence or body paragraph. They must be from the same source and can be from different paragraphs or pages of that same source. Since the first cited paragraph or sentence is done normally then the others are done differently. On the other hand, it still shows the citation has already been used more than once. An explanation on block citing is only necessary when there are more than forty words. The skills that I obtained from this class were pulled off by paying attention.
Even if the class hasn’t fully ended, I can say I am proud of my current grade and the work applied. It wasn’t done overnight when drafting an essay that involves time needed to be done correctly. Not only that, staying connected with Professor Hammett during class and learning from her. Switching to a different essay format, MLA to APA is easier than it used to be at the beginning. Citing in APA is a skill that was improved in workshops and assignments in the class. This allowed me to have more confidence in drafting essays and refining the quality of my essays.