University of Maryland University College
Philosophy 348 A Conversation not a Confrontation
30 June 2013

While traveling on the highest plane of Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, born one second after midnight on 1 January 1946, officially became the first Baby Boomer to receive social security in October 2007 (Sandeen, C. 2008p. 15). This is my generation all be it I was born at the end of the time period identified with Baby Boomer.
Baby Boomers were born between the years of 1946 to 1964. Boomers tend to value education and many have relied on educational attainment to support their high need for professional identity “ (Sandeen, C. 2008p. 15). To maintain or obtain new jobs or higher positions I have taken specific courses to help me achieve a goal. I have many college credits; I took this course because it is needed to complete a college degree the latest challenge I placed on myself. I have delayed taking a basic writing course because I knew my grammar skills were not on par for what was needed for college work. I thought my writing skills were acceptable but using proper grammar would be my downfall. I have taking library skills seminars and courses in the over my career to know how to research and library database. I found out I was weak on properly formatting my papers in the APA style. I have always written a certain way and I learn some technics I was using were not used in APA writing or proper formatting. Unlike Generation Xer and Millennial, I’m set in my ways and it’s hard to change my way of doing some time I’ve been doing the same way for many years. Changing my ways was not going to happen. I thought my writing skills were reasonable and all I needed to do was improve my grammar. I found out essentially my fears of using grammar properly was well founded. I was always taught to write the way I talk there’s a lot of truth in that statement but I needed a good grammar foundation to be a good writer. Of course I’m fifty years of age and I know what I’m doing, I don’t need to meet every criterion the instructor is asking for to pass this course. Reviewing the mistakes identified on the drafts essays I submitted was not a problem; the problem was I knew better than the professor what was required and how it should be formatted when I submitted. I learned I had to meet the professor expectation and not turn in what I thought was a properly formatted APA assignment. Submitting properly APA formatted assignments were a major problem that took me a few assignments to learn and change. Submitting grammatically correct assignment was challenging, I knew when I started this course I needed a lot of work to improve my grammar skills. Adverbs, nouns, adjectives and punctuation were not a strong suit for me when I was in high school and now thirty years later my grammar and punctuation skills had probably declined further. During the course my grammar skills have increased using the comfit exercises. The comfit exercises allowed me to work independently completing the reading, reviewing the examples and completing the exercises to improve my grammatical skills. This is a basic course but I know it provided me a foundation to build on improving my writing and research skills. I will be able used the skills I learned during this course to use online library services and other web service to properly identify academic documents, journals, and webs site during research. Reflecting further back I initially learned how to research books and articles in a library using the card catalog, I’ve learned a lot and come a long way since learning how to properly research information. Learning how to use technology effective and efficiently was a small challenge for me, I did not grow up using technology in every part of my life as Millennial have done. “Millennial students have a different mindset when it comes to