Reflective Essay 

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After being out of school for nearly 20 years, I enrolled in this course in August. I was worried about my ability to write at a collegiate level. However, I have learned a lot about writing during this course. I wrote two essays in this course - an argumentative essay and a rhetorical analysis essay. Both essays were related to the personality disorder, narcissism, and how it has become a social epidemic. Out of all the essays I have written, the argumentative essay has been the most instructive for me. In that essay, I explored that narcissism is becoming more prevalent in today's society, and people are increasingly focusing on themselves rather than the community as a whole. To support my claim, I provided evidence and suggested solutions to social narcissism, such as therapies, societal value shifts, and developing emotional intelligence.

Throughout this course, I gained a better understanding of citation styles, which I should have learned in my previous English class. Until now, I was unaware of the differences between APA and MLA citation styles. To clarify, APA style requires sources to be placed after the quotes in a sentence, whereas in MLA style, they are placed before the sentence-ending marks. Additionally, I learned that blocked passages do not require quotation marks and are the opposite of sentence-end citations. With this newfound knowledge, I can now create a Works Cited page with hanging indentions and in alphabetical order. This information is crucial as it applies to all my college essays.

Throughout the course, I gained a significant amount of knowledge on writing and the absurd. I learned that our society is plagued with many social epidemics, and I was able to overcome several writing struggles along the way. However, this course helped me become a faster writer and taught me how to propose an argument with research-based solutions. Overall, I am satisfied with the course and would take it again. It has greatly benefited my writing and critical thinking skills