Skipping ahead.

My Junior year in high school I took AP English which fulfilled my English 1010 credit. My freshman year of college I jumped right into English 2010, thinking that I would be in over my head. Fortunately, I had a really great teacher, Jefferey Butler, who worked with each student individually. The class only had about 15 students, which created a really welcoming environment. For whatever reason, I do not remember much about this class, aside from reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I remember being inspired by this book, and I did well on all assignments regarding it. Perhaps I do not remember anything else from the course, because I was doing well, and knew that I would continue to do well, that I did not pay attention to the concepts. It could also be due to the fact that I had not taken a developmental course, and the 2010 course expounded upon the principles introduced in English 1010.

Either way, I did not learn any finite and defined grammar rules. Presumably, I should have learned about grammar in my AP English class, but perhaps I faced the same conundrum; that my teacher assumed we were upper-division students and should know the rules already. Again, in this class we also focused heavily on literature and responding to it. Until I received a job as a writing tutor, I was blissfully unaware of my lack of grammar knowledge. I used to be able to read something and recognize an error, and have had difficulties explaining to my tutees why something is wrong. I am glad that I received this job, because it is making me critically think about all aspects of language, which will help me in my future career as an English teacher.