Major Project 1 Photography Class

I am finally in a photography and the cameras just started rolling. Our first assignment was on Line, Value, and Focus. I was focused too much on understanding focus, since I'd never used manual focus and had to set my camera on Auto(yuck) but I've learned a new skill which proves to be quite useful. I do feel quite stupid for not knowing to use manual focus, but at least I am learning in the class. Critique today: Used my directional lines photo with gamma adj. and cropping and received a 5. Only one other in the class was rated that high.