Reflective Essay

The famous quote “We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are” by Max De Pree adequately describes my experience in the course FOUN1401: Writing in the Disciplines. This main objectives of this course is to identify and use defining elements This course was very effective during my first semester at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. Developing every part of my life not only academically as a student and an individual was what this course did to me. In order for me to become successful in my life learning is very crucial so just remaining at one level of education is not adequate for surviving in life. Learning is process which takes place every day and continuously without the person knowing that it is being done. This course has contributed to my knowledge tremendously and has made me more competent in all facets of my life particularly academically. “We cannot what we need to be remaining what we are” Max De Preen can be used to describe my experience with this course by learning about documentation styles, plagiarism and paraphrasing and summarizing. Documentation styles is a topic in Foun1401: Writing in the Disciplines which has made me realize that “we cannot become what we need to be by remaining who we are” according to Max De Pree. Learning about the different documentation styles such as APA format and MLA format has contributed to my academic career effectively. When writing research papers it is very important to record the sources used as this makes your work more credible. Before doing this course, I was ignorant about the different documentation styles but doing assignments such as the annotated bibliography and the library session has taught me how it should be done. In order for me to become successful in life I cannot remain in the same situation so by doing this course it reinforced the point that change is inevitable. The citing of sources must be correctly done at the end of each paper with the correct headings and organizational strategies which I did not know before doing this course. Also, plagiarism is another topic which I learnt about in FOUN1401: Writing in the Disciplines which has made me realize that ‘we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are” Max De Pree. This course has taught me a lot about the topic plagiarism and how it is serious crime. Using other person’s information and ideas and trying to pass it off as your own is a serious crime which can be defined as plagiarism. As a student completing this course, I heard about plagiarism but this course taught me a lot more about it. Persons plagiarize a lot without knowing and this course taught me how it is done mistakenly and unmistakably. However, with the help of certain assignments such as the research paper I learnt that plagiarism is not acceptable and therefore I should ensure that my sources are recorded properly in a bibliography/ reference carefully placed at the back which should be the last page. Lastly, the topic paraphrasing and summarizing in FOUN1401: Writing in the Disciplines has helped me understand that “we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.” Prior to this course I was unaware that there was a major difference between paraphrasing and summarizing. This course has taught me that paraphrasing is the act of rewording and maintaining the length while summarizing is listing the main points captured in your own words with must be fewer and shorter in length. This posed a major challenge for me during the course because I had difficulties in doing this properly. However, with many practice I learnt how to master this technique properly because if I didn’t complete the necessary tasks I would not have become a better student by remaining not interested in doing this. In conclusion, the profound quote “we cannot become what we need to be by remaining who we are” by Max De Pree is directly linked to my experience with the course FOUN1401: Writing in the Disciplines. The main highlight topics in the course for me were: documentation styles, paraphrasing and summarizing and plagiarism. This course has extremely helped me to grasp better knowledge about the English language and how to write properly crafted papers. In the topics listed above I realized that as a student in order for me to develop academically I cannot remain on the same path by not learning about how to write research papers which I did in this course.