“I know it's early, but I wanted to welcome you to my Intermediate Composition class and let you know that it's now available on Blackboard.” I received an email with this as the opening sentence on August 1, eleven days before classes began. I immediately checked the syllabus and thought that I had definitely made a mistake signing up for this class. I had never taken an honors English class in high school and this would be my first honors class at UC. I had a feeling I was in over my head and in a way I was. This class has challenged me and made me think differently. My abilities in reading, researching, writing, and critical thinking have improved due to taking this class. As we began being assigned the reading, I was a little overwhelmed at first, but I began to see the things I was reading in a different way after I began actively reading. I started drawing conclusions and began relating what we were reading to my everyday life. I was so interested in Malcolm X’s story that I actually asked my mom if she could get me his biography at the library. I began trying to imagine what the author was thinking while writing and what sorts of things caused them to draw the conclusions that they had. The more of the assigned reading I read, the better my writing became because I was reading good writing. I began to think about things more as I would write. I would stop and think, “Is this essay going to be able to go anywhere? Is my topic effective? Will I be able to answer what I need to with both my topic and thesis? Is what I’m saying actually what I am trying to convey to the reader?” These are all questions that I should have been thinking about before but the essays and this class made me consider them more. In the past, I would not always consider these questions and my essays would not be as effective as a result. Improving my ability to do research, ultimately improved my writing skills. I did not realize the importance of these questions until after I had the conference about my first paper. I saw that in my Literacy Narrative, I had written a narrative that happened to mention literacy. In my second essay, I began to think of the questions more, but it was my final essay that actually made me consider them. The research ended up helping me improve my writing. After doing the proper amount of research and the most effective amount, my writing was able to flow and improve. For two of the three essays, I had to go out and research the topics. During the Comparative Genre Analysis, I kept rewording and rearranging the different words I put in the search bar. Before deciding on disaster communications, I looked up around 25 different word combinations trying to find something I could write about in the Communication/PR field. My wording in the way I researched and the actual articles I used improved. In the third essay, an Ethnography of a Discourse community, my research skills needed to improve. The essay had to include research of the discourse community and interviewing a member of the discourse community. Before interviewing the member, I had to do research so I would have actual questions to ask them. However, after interviewing them I was able to find better research for my paper. For example, after speaking with the member of UC’s PRSSA, I had the idea to look at Miami University PRSSA. My essay would not have been able to come together if it were not for my research abilities improving. Research became something that I realized I needed to improve on because I noticed that I had a hard time choosing a topic which ultimately affected my papers negatively. For example, in my second essay, I could not come up with a topic. For one of the classes we had to bring in sources and I had horrible sources because I had no idea what to write about. One of my classmates mentioned the Hillary Clinton email scandal and I did not have any other options, so I decided to write my rough draft on it. I shortly realized, after writing my first draft, that this was a hopeless topic. After typing in every random communication topic I could think of, I found an article on disaster communication and decided to use that. I was at a big disadvantage for the entire paper because I had no idea what to write about so I missed two days where I could have been improving and editing my paper. The more research I did, the more my critical thinking skills began to develop and improve. The actual process of choosing my topics involved critical thinking and therefore, it ultimately began to improve. The process involved me considering if this topic was effective if I could write a paper on it, and if it was something that I was actually interested in. I needed to figure out if the sources I chose were ones that were going to make my essay effective or if they were filled with pointless jargon that would not contribute in any way. Even in my reading abilities, I had to think critically about what they author was saying and how they were conveying the topic. My critical thinking began to improve but it is still improving to this day. This class has helped me improve and develop four critical skills. As a result, I will use these skills in my future career. I am a Communication major and after graduation, I would like to do Public Relations for a company. Being able to write, read and research are skills that I will undoubtedly need, and therefore, will be expected to know how to do them. This will come in handy when I am taking upper-level Communication classes that are focused on writing. I can definitely say that this class helped me become more improved in skills that will take me far in my future career. I am thankful that I did not give up when I got that email on August 1, even though I was definitely in over my head.