“This essay is about my experience learning English in my ENGL 11000 Freshman Composition class. I discuss my fears, my difficulties, and how this class helped me feel more confident. Through writing and classwork, I learned to express myself better, to trust in myself, and to understand that every effort brings me closer to my future.”

How beautiful it is to be able to understand a professor, but the fear that comes when taking a step inside the classroom, seeing new faces, new accents, new classes, and inside there, dreams of being able to understand each one of them, my excitement that even though it is the beginning, it is part of my ending, it is part of my future, of my dreams, of my goals. Yes, there was stress, there was tiredness, there was sleepiness, there were headaches, empty minds, blank thoughts, but suffering is part of future perfection, they are like those small bumps on the road so that you can reach your destination, and my destination is more important than how difficult the path gets. Personally, I have been fortunate to find good English teachers in my life, they have been kind, and since I was little it was my favorite class, I loved reading in English, writing in English, participating, and having teachers tell me that I would go far thanks to my resilience. But it changed a little when I arrived here, now it wasn’t something I liked, it was a necessity, and I got a little discouraged because my pronunciation held me back, and coming from a Hispanic family, the one with the most “experience” learning English was me, so I was the one who had to help with communication, I had forgotten how beautiful it was to write in English. When I entered this class, I didn’t know what it was about, what we were going to do, what it was about, but along the way, I realized it was exactly what I loved doing before… writing. Being inside four walls with people with different accents and types of English made me feel safe. Enid Brain, our English professor, was now part of that path, being understanding, empathetic, fun, and always thinking about others, she made that beautiful feeling I had before when writing come back, maybe now I am just another student, but I know that in the future I will make a big difference.

In this class, I realized that not only did I like expressing myself through letters, words, and sentences, but also by turning them into multimedia content. We started writing our first essay, The Language & Literacy Narrative, after that, we needed to translate it to some video, poster, image, add, etc. I decided to create a VIDEO, gathering some pictures, videos, and memories. This was a new experience, which taught me to find a way to show my essay in a different way, I didn’t do something similar. And also I used this translating my synthesis essay into a poster, using different words, colors, images, which described my essay the same as it was in my mind. Expressing my writing through multimedia is a perfect way to demonstrate my editing abilities.

Also In this class, I learn to share my thoughts with my classmates. I was so introvert, when I have to share what I think, what I want to share, what I understand, and I felt insecure when I started to pronounce the first word, the nervous traveling my whole body, and that lump in my throat that was difficult to get rid of at that moment. This was a familiar feeling each time I got to talk in English with my partners. But in this class, I managed to commit myself, overcome my lack of confidence, and use all the fear of what others would say about my pronunciation as motivation to gather the courage to take the first step and say that first word. Although it might seem insignificant to many, for me it was a new act of bravery. The simple fact of being able to build friendships through the class and share our thoughts during peer reviews was very important in my life. I had always been closed off to meeting new people, talking to them, or disagreeing with something I didn’t think was right or simply disagreed with completely. Now I realized that I could say what I thought and nothing bad would actually happen. Having a respectful conversation, sharing different points of view, demonstrates the maturity of many people. And thanks to this class, I was able to overcome my fear and share my thoughts with others.

Finally one more thing that I learned thanks to this class is to write my essays with my own words, thoughts and style. In Peruvian schools, English teachers taught us to write sentences and create conversations in a structured way. But when I went to high school here, I had to write essays for my English class and also for the ELA Regent that I had, but I was lost because I never wrote an essay before. I was scared, but finally I could learn how to write essays. There were different types. I learned how to write each of them. I keep writing in a structured way, and with basic words because I don’t have an expanded vocabulary. But when I went to college, I saw that the students of this class could write their essays with different types of English and those were fine. This is an example of how I wrote my argumentative essays in  High School, trying to write in a structured and formal way.

Now in college, I could learn to write using my own style and mixing my feelings and thoughts instead of writing with harsh words. As you can see in this extract of my Synthesis Essay here, I used my own style, words and personal experience, “When I moved to this country everything was different, but especially the change of language, it was always easy for me to express my feelings, my thoughts and opinions. But when I came here, I had to learn how to do all of that in English. High school started and it became harder each time, now I have to understand and learn new topics in an unknown language. But my grandmother who is in Peru told me, “Eres muy inteligente hijita, no te rindas nunca, saldras adelante y siempre estaré ahí acompañándote en cada paso que des” (“You’re very smart, my girl. Never give up. You will move forward, and I will always be there, supporting you every step you take.”) I think that many hispanic people or immigrants have a person for whom they would do anything, or they simply find peace in thinking about that person, which helps them overcome the shock of the big change when coming to a different country.” I know that you can see the difference between both of them, in my Argumentative Essay from High School I wrote in a formal and structured way and in the other I could express more my feelings and share the words of my grandma, which give me a lot of happiness.

Ultimately, when I look back at everything this class gave me, I understand that it was never only about learning English. It was about learning myself in another language, learning how to be brave even when my voice shook, and learning that my accent, my fear, and my story are part of who I am, not something I need to hide. Writing helped me remember something I had forgotten: that expressing myself is powerful, no matter the language. Through essays, videos, posters, and conversations with my classmates, I discovered that my words matter and that my experiences deserve to be told. This class reminded me that the road will never be easy, but each difficulty is preparing me for what comes next. I may still feel nervous, tired, or insecure sometimes, but now I know I can keep going. This is only the beginning, and even if my path has bumps, my destination is still clear. I am building my future one word at a time, and I am proud of how far I have already come.