Amy's Reflective Essay (Rough Draft)

When I began college at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2005 I was scared. I wasn't sure what to expect of my first college class but not knowing what would be expected of me was even scarier. I entered school majoring in the Hotel College, which is one of the best in the country second only to Cornell; a sore spot for the students and teachers, and quickly found out the only thing to be frightened of was the high probability of dying of boredom. My first year of school was filled with introductory courses about economics, business, tourism, and marketing and I hated every minute of every class.

My dislike for classes caught me off guard. I thought I had made a good decision about my major and was feeling lost. Learning about the major industry of the city I loved should have been exciting but I found myself daydreaming in class on the days I even bothered to show up. I can recall vividly one day in the auditorium held class, capacity 200 and filled almost to the max, taking a test about which wine went with red meat best and the process of calculating convention floor space. The test was open book, open notes, and prepared by our travel agent instructor. I dropped the class the next day. I was so unhappy I even thought about taking some time off of school until I figured out what to do since business and tourism was obviously not my niche.

I decided to finish out the remainder of my semester and make a decision over the summer about how to continue. I made this decision based on not wanting to disappoint my mother, I was the first to go to college, and quitting would have been broken her heart. There was also one bright spot on my schedule that semester, a required English literature class taught by a poet, Dr. Joshua Kryah or Prof. K as he preferred to be called. While it was just dumb luck that I was assigned this class with this teacher, it changed everything. I felt engaged in his class. We read Ibsen, Moliere, Brecht, Melville, Beckett, Akhmatova and Soyinka. I remember every poem, short story, and play in detail. He made class interesting and this class was a lifesaver that I clung to while I tried not to drown in my other classes. I had had always loved to read but I had never thought that I could go to school simply to read literature.

The next semester I changed my major to English and felt a huge weight lift off of my chest. Being an English major has been challenging. I've learned to read between the lines. There's symbolism and subtext that I never would have know to look for without my education at both UNLV and Texas Wesleyan University. I've learned that being an English major means joining a conversation about idea's, hopes, dreams, and heartache. Politics, history, and religion are integral to studying literature as well. No matter how closely I read a text in preparation for class there is never a time when I leave that class without learning something I never would have thought of. Even though I love my major I still stumbled throughout my college career. I lost focus off and on and some of my classes suffered because of this but this has taught me accountability.

I feel like I have come a long way from that scared freshman to the confident college senior that I am today. I still suffer from lack of focus on occasion but now as a new mother I have someone to motivate me to work harder and do better both in and out of academics. Changing my major to English was one of the best decision I have ever made as likewise so was choosing to transfer to Texas Wesleyan. The small school environment has made me become more active in my classes and more engaged in my studies. Preparing this portfolio has been bittersweet. Looking back over previous work and being able to see how I have grown as a writer and an interpreter of literature is rewarding. I am sad, and scared, to think of having to step out of the academic work and enter the "real world." Hopefully my professional life will be as rewarding as my academic life has been these past years.