Here is the most recent essay that I had to write for my W131 class in college. I guess I am open for critique, but I don't really expect any. Anyways here it is:
College seems like a scary place to upperclassmen in high school. There is a level of uncertainty and it is this uncertainty that makes students around the world anxious for their next step in their educational career. The same applies to me. I was unsure how my learning strategies would transition to college, specifically my writing and reading skills. Math means practice in my eyes. I knew that no matter what level of math I will be taking, the more problems I do, the better I will get. The same goes to any programming language that I will learn. Continuous use will allow me to become fluent in whatever language I desire. But I never saw writing and reading as something that takes practice to get better.I read quite a bit. Mysteries, fantasies, science fictions, fictions, I have tried to read them all. I was able to read almost all the books that I set my mind to, but whenever a teacher would assign a book for class, I would not be able to read the entire book if my life depended on it. I would then think to myself why is it that even after reading all the books I read, I still could not read a book that I did not want to. The only answer that came to mind was, it is because I did not want to. I could change what I do to read the books, the location, the sounds I hear, even the pages that I have to read, but the one thing I could not change was my feeling towards the book. I did not want to read anything assigned, so I decided to just skim the book to get a general gist of the characters and the story direction. Good enough for any assignment, quiz, or essay that my high school English teacher might give us.I was ecstatic when the bells rung signaling that my final English class I would need to take in high school ended. Freedom from those books I could never read no matter what I tried. I was happy up until the point that I sat in front of my desk. Plans began to be made for the upcoming summer, basketball on Thursdays, football on Mondays, random get together, everything. Summer was looking like it would be great, but there was still a bit of uncertainty looming above me. College was just about 2 months away. Orientation was coming up even sooner. I began to question what classes I will take and what I will have to do to ensure I graduate with a Computer Science BS. I began looking at the required course, when I saw something that I fully expected, W131 first semester freshman year.I knew I will have to change my techniques but I decided to test the waters. See if there was any chance that my reading strategies that I developed in high school could work here. Long story short, it did not. The book we were assigned was “Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire” by Bruce Nussbaum. The book goes into what creativity is and different methods that we can use to become more creative. It was unlike any book I have read before. Instead of telling a single story, which has defined characters, a plot, a conflict, the stuff that I got used to reading throughout school, it had multiple small stories which were only present in order to further prove the idea Nussbaum was trying to portray in the book.Along with reading each chapter of the book for in class discussions, we also had to write responses to the chapter, or OTC. In the beginning I wrote random responses, generally only about the first few pages of a chapter. The way I was able to keep up with the book was the in class discussions that I would rarely contribute to. As these OTCs progressed, they became more and more complex. What details do you remember from the chapter? How can you use methods Nussbaum writes of in your daily life? It became apparent that I was not the only one struggling with the book and the assignments. That was when we learned different active reading techniques to use for our next assignment.I have been a passive reader my entire life. Even with books that I got lost in, I would read passively and lose most of the details by the time I put the book down. Being a passive reader is easy. It requires no pre-reading work, no work while reading, and no work afterwards. All you have to do is sit down and read. As students, we have a lot of work and generally put reading aside as something we can quickly get done or not do at all. In truth, in order to completely understand any reading properly, whether it is a storybook or a textbook, you have to spend time on it. There are many methods of active reading. Writing in the book, highlighting key phrases, taking notes, active reading is unique for each reader.Accepting you have a problem is half the battle. After realizing I could be the poster student for a passive reader, I knew I had to find which active reading technique works for me. I knew instantly that writing in the book was out of question. I do not even fold the corners of my books to remember what page I stop at. But I could still write about specific paragraphs in the chapters. I found a bunch of Post-It® notes and began to read with the notes right next to me. Whenever I came upon something that peaked my interest, I paused, wrote on a note and stuck it on top of the word, sentence, or paragraph. I immediately realized the time it took. The same reading that took just a few minutes is now requiring at least an hour to complete. I began to question whether it was even worth the time. The next class, I was shocked with how much of the chapter I actually still remembered. For the first time of the year, I was able to confidently participate in the group discussion.From the start of the book to the end, I changed as a reader. At the start, my goal was to finish the reading and get the OTC assignment completed. That was the only thing I wanted to do, and what the book was trying to say had no importance to me. By the time I finished, I look back and am amazed I was able to do anything in high school, not just in English. Both the active reading strategies and the information I was able to retain from the book, can be used in every aspect of my life, educationally and socially. Creativity in a gift, we should do everything we can to use it to our best ability.