My Reflection Paper

Walking into English 12 Honors I knew I was about to embrack on the hardest adventure in my life. When people seen that my teacher was Mr. Gallagher the only thing that was said was "GOOD LUCK!" people commented about his lengthy papers and his strange behavior. Many people who i always thought were smarter than me dropped the class the very first day of school. I thought to myself that I must be smarter than that because I decided to stay and try. I was so wrong. Mr. Gallagher wasn't as strange as people sed but his work was just as peole said.

Doing the very first assignments weren't that bad. "Red Shift" was a good poem, my only problem was I knew nothing about poems. In years past the only real thing that was focused on was SOAPSTONE and that was easy seeing as we basically didn't have to really think about anything. Nobody ever asked me about how I felt our how felt or how the poet was trying to make me feel. When that question was asked I repiled how am I suppose to know I didn't know him. After sitting back for a while it started to make sense to me. I have always like poetry but I never really knew what it was. I never really ever thought of mulitple meanings of words and pharses. I thank Mr. Gallagher for intro ducing me to a new funner way of looking at poetry.

More into the year we started with the lengthy papers. The first one I recall was the 1000 word discription of Bruegel's "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus." This is when I really wished I had switched out because I knew that i couldn't write 1000 words on a painting. Exspecially one that I didn't really care for too much but I did try. Too bad I had made it harder for me than it really had to be. If i had spent as much time actually doing the work as apose to complaining about it and doubting my self i would've had much better grades. I know I can't blame anyone else for this besides myself. My laziness is the cause of many things going wrong in my life and now it might be the reason I fail my english class.

Closer to the end of the year I tried to turn things around noticing that Mr. Gallagher was willing to give me a chance. Of course I started out strong but than I again started to fall behide. I knew that before I walked into his room in Auguest I was in no way a writer and I knew that leaving his classroom I was still not going to be a writer. With the way we got to self express oursleves I said to myself "Hey, you can do this for a short period of time", so I was finally not doubting myself. I knew it was a little too late but again I can't blame anyone but myself.

Over all in this english class i grew from where I was before, but i didn't grow enough because I wasn't willing to. Mr. Gallagher is one awsome teacher and I wish that i didn't isolate myslef from him in the begining. I always knew he was there to help but I always thought I wasn't smart enough to do it. Only I know now that I am. Too bad it took until May to notice. Mr. Gallagher, Thanks for being such a cool teacher. Sorry it took so long for me to notice it. I hope everything goes great for you. As for me all I can do is pray I didn't fully mess up my future!!!