Reflection Essay

English 111 with Paul Gasparo

The first day of class I thought this class was going to be an easy A. However, it was not for me. If you have a hard time with computers do not take his class. I was never really good with computers but I managed through the semester.

Mr. Gasparo was extremely honest. He tells you from the beginning what he expects from his students and sticks to his word. I respect him for not calling his students out in front of the class. If something is wrong and he needs to talk to you about it he will mention that he needs to talk to that person after class. If you tend to turn in your papers late he will not accept them. If you don’t turn in the paper on time he still wants you to do the assignment. I understand why he would want his students to do that. He gives you one point for it instead of the zero. If you take his class does not wait until the last minute to do his the papers he assigns. They require research and time.

Extra credit was always a possibility. They were always pretty simple assignment. He would also give us extra credit if we emailed him work that was assigned, such as a power point we presented at the end of the semester. I regret never taking advantage of the extra credit assignment he provided for us.

Personally I did not like some of the reading he wanted us to read but they went along with the lesson plans. If he gave you reading material for homework read the paper and take some notes on what you liked, didn’t like, or any comments. The next class he will ask questions about the paper he wanted the class to read. He did not give us one test which was good, especially for those people that freeze up when a test is placed in front of them.

He showed some videos in the beginning of the semester that I found interesting. They definitely get you thinking and help you with your Argument paper you do at the end of the semester. The Argument paper was the worth the most points.

Unlike the teachers that start with a talking about homework or throwing a pop quiz in the beginning of class, he shows his students a funny video from you tube. If you put effort into the assigned writings, turn everything in on time, and attend his class then you will have no problem passing his class.

Revised Diagnostic Essay

City Girls Camping

My family and I have always lived in the city. When I was eleven years old my divorced mother decided to bring my two sisters, my aunt, and I camping. Expecting this to be an adventurous vacation, none of us realized how unprepared we were for this trip.

When we got to the campsite, which was about thirty minutes away from Jamestown, the tent was the first disaster. Sliding the long metal rods through the holes in the tent is usually easy and self explanatory. However I managed to puncture three different holes in the tent trying to put the rods in. Then we could not press the stakes in the ground hard enough to hold the tent up.

My sister asked me, “How did u rip three holes in the tent but you cannot put the stakes in the ground?”

Frustrated and drenched with perspiration I whined, “It was a cheap tent.”

It took an hour and forty-five minutes for all five of us to put the tent together and secure it. However, we also had to patch the holes which didn’t hold well through the night. After all that hard labor we became hungry.

Canned vegetables, canned soup, some hamburger meat, chicken, and bread was what my mother brought for us to eat. My aunt hid s’more supplies, candy, and chips in the car. Starting the fire pit was needed for my mom’s food. We noticed that we were supposed to bring our own rocks to put around the pit; however, my mom did not think to bring any. So she suggested that we go to each abandoned fire pit and take one rock. After gathering enough rocks and placing the wood in the middle, we thought all you had to do was throw the match into the center and sticks would begin to crackle. Unfortunately that did not work.

We gave up on starting the fire and headed to see Jamestown. It was the hottest day of the year so walking around outside looking at old Indian material was not the highlight of our trip, but we made the best of it. My aunt was really into all the different equipment they showed the guests. She would carry around the buckets of food on her head until she tripped over he own foot and spilt the dry grains everywhere. We laughed for hours after watching that. Then she tried to smash these berries, but the way she was doing it was not working. A tiny girl, who looked about six years old, grabbed the bowl from my Aunt and made the berries into jam in about ten seconds.

The little girl looked at her and explained rudely, “You got to put some muscle in it girl.”
I laughed so hard I started to cry. As we were leaving to go back to the campsite my mother saw a stack of apartment books, and wanted to use the paper to start the fire.
When we arrived back at the campsite there were two guilty squirrels digging through our trash that we had left out before we rushed to Jamestown. Shredded paper and half eaten food were strewn across our campsite. Luckily my aunt hid her junk food stash in the car. While my sisters and I started cleaning the mess, my mom worked on starting the fire again. This time she got the flames to produce.

As we ate, watching the sun go down, we reminisced through all of the extreme events that happened earlier that day. As we talked about it we could not stop laughing and joking about how horrible we were at camping. Even though there were frustrating times, I still giggle thinking about our wild camping trip.

Diagnostic Essay

Cranes from our campsite,
550 x 412 - 55k - jpg
media-cdn.tripadvisor.com

City Girls Camping

My family and I have always lived in the city. When I was eleven years old my divorced mother decided to bring my two sisters, my aunt, and I camping. Expecting this to be an adventurous vacation, none of us realized how unprepared we were for this trip.

When we got to the campsite, which was about thirty minutes away from Jamestown, the tent was the first disaster. Since we lost the directions on how to set up the tent, it took an hour and forty-five minutes for all five of us to put the tent together and secure it.

Starting the fire pit was next. We noticed that we were supposed to bring our own rocks to put around the pit; however, my mom did not think to bring any. So she suggested that we go to each abandoned fire pit and take one rock. After gathering enough rocks and placing the wood in the middle, we thought all you had to do was throw the match into the center and sticks would begin to crackle. Unfortunately that did not work.

We gave up on starting the fire and headed to see Jamestown. It was the hottest day of the year so walking around outside looking at old Indian material was not the highlight of our trip, but we made the best of it. As we were leaving to go back to the campsite my mother saw a stack of apartment books, and wanted to use the paper to start the fire. When we arrived back at the campsite there were two guilty squirrels digging through our trash that we had left out before we rushed to Jamestown. Shredded paper and half eaten food were strewn across our campsite. Luckily my aunt put three bags of food back in the car before we headed out. While my sisters and I started cleaning the mess, my mom worked on starting the fire again. This time she got the flames to produce.

As we ate, watching the sun go down, we reminisced through all of the extreme events that happened earlier that day. As we talked about it we could not stop laughing and joking about how horrible we were at camping. Even though there were frustrating times, I still giggle thinking about our wild camping trip.