Sixteen weeks is a magical number. A magical number to reflect our successes, and failures. A magical number of our emotions and hoping for the term to quickly come to an end. First year of college is almost completed, and I'm quite confident to conquer future English classes. My perspective changed overtime, having the positive reinforcement put upon myself is a great reason of change. Although trial and errors occurs, it gave me the strength of focus on succeeding. Keeping in mind of the growth and fixed mindset, helped me reevaluate my actions toward English class. I believe I have improved to apply more of growth mindset. I found a new perspective towards reading and composition much differently and positive compared to the past English classes. So far, college experience hasn’t be a dramatic drift from high school, especially in an English class. My foundation to understanding critical thinking, critical analyze, and annotating on texts are strong. Since my high school taught us to be critical thinkers, I didn’t apply my skills much in high school. This is an instant regret for all the times I should’ve been a critical thinker. Applying the skills I learned both in high school and English 1A, improved my time management. Time management is important when understanding the tough subjects. Since English is neither the best nor the worse subject I’d like to face, time management is everything. Without having to apply the skills of critical thinking, critical analyzing, and annotating, I would be in a slower pace. Reflecting on freewriting journal, discourse community ethnography, and education, community and language essay, I had come a long way, and I’m excited to expand my writing abilities. Applying the skills on assignments helps me exercise my thought process. It all begins with the freewriting journal entries. Having to write three times a week may be tiring, but overall, I’m impressed with the limited time allowed has created a journal entry. This had helped me to express more and expand my ideas through essays. As Peter Elbow stated, “ It is an exercise in bringing together the process of producing words and putting them down on the page. Practiced regularly, it undoes the ingrained habit of editing at the same time you are trying to produce, (Elbow).” Elbow explains the ideal of freewriting, and how writing becomes effective by limited editing. This is beneficial for me because I “over edit” as I write, therefore, I don’t progress along as I write. With the help of freewriting, I continue to write without stopping and it practices me to finish writing and edit at the end. My most successful essay in English 1A is the discourse community ethnography essay in analyzing clinical psychology as a discourse community. As I’m still searching for the prospective major, I find myself enjoying psychology class. Having this essay assigned, I also applied John Swales’ characteristics to having a successful clinical psychology discourse community. There was three characteristics from Swales that is mutual to clinical psychology. Clinical psychology discourse community reflected on Swales characters such as; establishing a set of common public goals, communication with other members, and the participation to provide information and feedback. In this essay, I reflected on two discourse community; American Psychological Association and the California Community College Mental Health and Wellness Association (MHWA) and critically analyzing the characteristics. Although we were mandated to research for one discourse community, I find it useful to expand my options when changing into my prospective major. Writing this essay is beneficial because I was able to interview a psychologist who’s currently a member of the two discourse community and helped me understand the daily routine as a psychologist. My most unsuccessful essay is education, community and language essay. Although I successfully critically analyzed the articles and such, I feel like my structure of the essay is weak. With the prompt I chose, I thought there was a lot to talk about, but overall, the essay didn’t pinpoint the main idea. Although I did thoroughly plan my essay, I feel that the details was too vague, and that was one reason for future improvements. I have trouble expressing details, to the message. Critically analyzing was the key for this essay, but when it comes to in class essays, I always miss the message of critically analyzing ideas. This is an attention to better critical analyze in future essays. If I had the option to do this class all over again, I would like to improve my writing skills to expanding details of the message I bring out. This would greatly benefit my essays to bring the reader's attention to understanding my point of view. Without the expansion of the details, the readers won’t understand my point of view and may not have any interests in reading my essay. For this reason, I will continue to gain the skills to be detailed as much as possible. As a prospective clinical psychology major, I will have to do lots of writing. Includes research, and analyzing “abnormalities”. Reflecting on English 1A, this is a foundation to critically analyze whether it’s research or a patient, I’ll have to face writing anyday. One day in Psychology 1, I had to critically analyze an article and write a paper about college students and hardships of life. Applying the skills in psychology that I have learned in English 1A, I had successfully critical analyzed the message the author points out. Not only did I manage to analyze the article, I also critiqued a passage in my own point of view. In the end, I had a perfect score, and applying the skills made me feel like I stepped up my critical analyzing game. I’m excited in gaining the skills for my future English, and Psychology classes. This chapter is not over yet, it’s just the beginning.