Category: Portfolio

Feighbe Solano

Professor Hall

Artist Statement

           This semester has definitely helped me grow and see “writing” in a completely different way. In my high school they had “majors” that would help them decide what group to section you off with. There was agriculture, RTC, and Center for Writing. My mom immediately put me into the center for writing and for my four years of highschool I took classes like Advanced Poetry, Advanced Writing, Creative Writing, and Shakespeare. Because of the consistency of these classes, I was shaping myself into a writer. I wrote poems and short plays and some of my best essays, but then highschool ended. I flunked my first college semester of English 101 and had to retake it. The professors I had didn’t challenge me at all creatively. One of my professors, throughout the entire semester, had us reading short stories and simply answer his questions in essay format, an entire waste of time. It made me lose my appreciation for writing.

          While looking through “Rate My Professor” I found Doctor Carrie Hall, she was rated very high and received so many comments on how she’s a great professor. I had to take her class, and I even rearranged my schedule multiple times in order to make this class fit. I’m not sure what I expected this class to be but it wasn’t what it turned out to be. By this time I only thought we’d be reading more books and short story’s but it was nothing like that at all. The projects that were presented to us through the units truly helped me get back into the hang of writing but not just through pen and paper, by using more creative outlets (Instagram) I was able to use my voice in a more effective way. My Instagram page on homelessness, MPNYC_ (Mission Possible NYC) is in my top two best works I’ve done for this class. I had never taken a writing project and customized it through an outlet where many people would be able to see and interact with it. Many writing projects simply get graded and put aside, for no one else to see and this is the complete opposite of MPNYC_ it is a public page for anyone to visit and read through and comment on, and the amount of productivity that I received on this page through likes, comments, and even followers, in the short amount of time that I had to put it together, was remarkable. On top of everything the subject that it’s based on is a REAL problem, while it doesn’t affect me personally it does affect the thousands of people who are of may become homeless, this project was dedicated to those people and in order to do that I had to step outside the box, remove myself from the equation, and instead think about the victims to this problem. This project shows my growth as a writer, from my first group project of the semester that was based on the education system, where I only had one slide and about two lines to say, which was also my least favorite project, unit two was definitely my best.

           As I mentioned before MPNYC_ is in my top two best works of done for this semester, the second project that’s also up there is my Bob’s Burgers project, this was unit three. What makes this project one of my best and favorites is the way that I took my all time favorite animated TV show, and I completely gutted it for its misconception on transgender women and men. When I say that this is my favorite show, I mean that I literally watch this almost everyday and have rewatched the series multiple times. In the beginning, unit three was a little hard for me to get on track with because we weren’t given the source, we had to look for it and choose for ourselves. I had gone back and forth between two ideas that I cannot remember right now, but in the end I chose to do it on my favorite show. The drawing that I did for this project was fun, but you can only see my growth through the artist statement that I wrote for unit three. I wrote about my process for this unit and I feel like any reader can see my side of the story whether they agree or not. It was a fun project to draw a Bobs Burgers scene and remake it into what I thought it should’ve been instead. Now, looking back at both of those projects while they are completely different because one is a drawing and the other is a Instagram page, they have one thing in common which is that they were both made to fight for a cause. A REAL cause that has absolutely nothing to do with me, but for the people around me. This is why these projects are my top two, because I didn’t do it on me or my story, they were made based on other people’s stories. The fight for equality for transgender people is still a real one, and the fight to end homelessness is a real one too. Never in my entire high school and college years had I done a project made for such important causes as these were and that’s where you can see my growth in Doctor Halls class, my page on homeless will stay active.

David Wu

5/22/19

Prof Hall

Eng 1121

Me As A Writer

            I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a perfect writer. Everyone has their own set of writing skills. I believed that I was a horrible writer for a long time since elementary school. I had to take ESL to learn how to write. Till now, although I feel my writing has improved a bit then before, there is still a lot for me to learn as a writer.

Coming to this class at the beginning of this semester, I expected it to be another regular English class. I expected us to just be given research papers and regular writing assignments to work on, just hand it in to be graded, and not learn on how to become a better writer. However, the assignments given to us by Professor Hall were something I wouldn’t have expected from an English class. The assignments given to us were assignments to help us find our “inner voice” in our writing and to be able to express our ideas on topics. I felt as if these type of assignments of being able to incorporate one’s point of view or ideas on certain topics is what makes the writer interested in writing and readers being able to see and read what the writer has to say.

The first assignment given to us, we had to write a specific event that impacted us in learning something. For me, I just wrote down lessons I learned from basketball from the top of my head without giving any details or explanations. Most professors would just read it, grade it, and hand it back, but Professor Hall read the paper thoroughly and had a lot of comments on it. She told me there was nothing in the essay that makes it me, there’s no specific details to my claims, and there was a lot to write about. Hearing the feedback from her showed me on how my writing can improve than before. Given the third assignment, a revision on any of the previous units, I decided to rewrite the education essay. This time I took the feedback I heard and incorporated it into the writing. Improving this essay by going into detail about my claims and showing how it makes it me by including my point of view and ideas. I felt the revision I wrote is definitely a lot better than the first essay I wrote.

This carried on to the following units and assignments. Every unit I would incorporate my point of view and ideas on the topic. For example, the final unit which was another revision, I decided to revise the second unit which was an essay about pop culture and social responsibility. Given what I learned on how to improve my writing, I did the same for this unit, incorporating my ideas and thoughts onto the assignment. I analyzed the Kendrick Lamar video “DNA” in depth and went into detail about lyrics and scenes in how I viewed it. This made me confident and interested in writing this essay knowing I am able to incorporate my thoughts to this essay for readers to read on what I think about this topic.

To sum it all up, I feel my writing has definitely improved through the semester. Before I would struggle to write a 500 word essay and feel my essays aren’t great because I wouldn’t know what to write or to know to go into detail in my essays. But this course showed me how to improve my writing by expressing my thoughts and ideas and going into detail on topics. This course definitely helped me find my “inner voice” in my writing. To me, I feel Professor Hall has made me a better writer than before and I would take her for my future English courses if possible to learn on how to improve my writing even more.

Latrell Greene

ENG 1121

Dr. Hall

5/21/19

Me as a Writer

My writing ability over the course of this semester, I feel, has improved. Engaging myself by being tasked in writing in different styles, genres, and formats, proved to be great exercise for my skills as a writer. Not only did I learn a lot of different ways to write, but I learned a little more about how to stay true to my own style of writing, and refine that style to convey my ideas in an effective, but distinct way.

What made this class so different, especially in regard to the comparison between this semester and my last semester’s English class, was its special emphasis on one’s “own voice”, and being able to express one’s ideas in their own unique way. In my last semester there was a quite contrasting focus on using specific writer’s templates in order to express our ideas to an audience in an effective way. For our major assignments, we were given specific articles to respond to, and templates to use as a guide. Leaving that semester and entering this new one, my expectations of the writing that I would be doing were still geared toward that template-driven form of writing. It ended up being surprising to find that this course and its professor takes a heavy approach on embracing self expression in writing.

Right off the bat, in the first unit of this course we were introduced to ideas like “everyone has their own English”. This means that a lot of us grow up in our own cultures, and in those cultures there may exist a different “normal” ways of speaking and expressing one’s self. So it’s reasonable to accept that: for a lot of us, our English-language grammar, writing and speaking won’t be so perfectly formal. This is especially true when considering that for a lot of people, English is not even a first language. Different “Englishes” can reflect different ways of expression, and that’s why they have value. After all, when writing about yourself, and your own experiences, why wouldn’t you want that piece of writing to sound as “you” as possible?

In my Unit 2 piece X-Men and Representation, what I really liked about producing that body of work, was that for the unit, I was allowed to choose upon any topic, which gave me leeay to use a subject that I could be particularly passionate about. In fact, a theme in that same writing piece also connects to one of the themes that I want to convey in this very work: That people enjoy and really appreciate having themselves be represented, whether “themself” refers to their way of thinking, their culture, their personality, or their experiences. In the X-Men piece, I wrote “representation in pop culture can be a wonderful experience for people who don’t normally see people like themselves in those mediums” (para. 5). I think that just like having someone’s background be represented in a medium can offer a deeper connection between a reader and a character, being allowed to fully embrace someone’s natural way of expression can just as well offer a deeper connection between a writer and their own work, allowing ideas and themes to come across more organically. Nowadays, I reflect off of this by reminding and allowing myself to be more conductive and fluid with my own ideas when it comes to layering my writing.

In Unit 3, we were allowed to choose any community problem that we deemed worthy of addressing. I had thought up and decided to expand upon addressing the problem of noise pollution. In one part, I had written: “the purpose of this letter is to persuade you to consider solutions to get New York City, one of the most noise polluted cities in the nation, to achieve a more considerate and moderate noise level, especially regarding our subway system”. (para. 1) What made the unit able to be interesting was that we got to choose our own problems to address, in regard to how we already felt about them. Getting to choose something like noise pollution to address, which could be a really obscure topic to many people, and having to collaborate with a team of people who would bring their own ideas to expand upon it proved to be both effective, and satisfying. I was able to see my own conceptual ideas motivate new ideas in other people, as well as have myself be inspired by those new ideas.

My work with both Units 2 and 3 really reflect the lessons that I’ve learned this semester, about the art of writing, and about the importance of expressing your own ideas; Ideas that hold value, both in the way that the ideas are expressed, and in the ideas themselves. Representation, both from the writer’s perspective as well as the reader’s, can offer a deeper connection from person to page.