Author: Novalis (Page 1 of 2)

I’ve been in a few communities during my lifetime, but the most recent community I’m in is the fitness community. I’ve been into working out for years now, but have been seriously dedicated for the last two years. I started during the beginning of quarantine since I had more than enough time to do something productive and beneficial. I started searching up workout and advice videos on youtube. I didn’t really understand the abbreviations fitness influencers would casually say and their language. It took me a while to do so. For example, fitness influencers use the terms “pre-workout meal” and  “post-workout meal” to highlight specifically if they’re eating before or after a workout. When I finally understood the definition, I started getting confused on which one stood for before or after. After a while into my fitness journey I finally recognized the difference. I also struggled learning abbreviations that defined  terms of specific exercises. For example, rather than saying “I’m going to use the Bench Press” we normally would say “BP” for short. Rather than saying “I’m going to do a deadlift or a back squat” we normally would use the abbreviations “DL” and “BS”. There are many other abbreviations people in the fitness community utilize and understand, but if you’re a beginner you will definitely struggle to understand. During the beginning of my journey I had no clue what any of those abbreviations meant and some people may feel excluded within the community because of that, but I personally never felt a way. I’ve been mostly on my own whenever going to the gym so if I don’t understand something in specific that just stays between me, myself and I. I prefer to just learn and grow on my own rather than asking others questions. 

When I first read the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao I was confused on how the word fuku impacted people’s lives and confused on what it really meant. All I really understood was that fuku wasn’t friendly. The first and second page is where I immediately got caught up. Although I didn’t understand the context, I kept on reading, to try and grasp an understanding of this word. As I continued I finally recognized what the author was explaining and it’s connections. When I finished the rest of the pages I re-read the first two in order to better my knowledge now that I understood. From what I understand in the novel, Junot Diaz (author)elaborates on the word fuku. According to Diaz the word fuku derived from Africans “carried in the screams of the enslaved.” To sum it up, the word fuku is defined as a curse or some sort of “doom”. Diaz continues utilizing this word throughout the text by highlighting its connection to the Dominican Republic’s dictator, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, who ruled from 1930 to 1961. Diaz includes stories from other Dominicans that have encountered fuku during their lifetime and John F. Kennedy’s assination as well. Now that I look back, Diaz may have been trying to catch the reader’s attention by making them confused in order for them to be curious enough to read more. Which is what happened in my case. Diaz probably does this so that readers become interested off the bat and don’t automatically assume the text will be boring. 

In the article “How to Read Like a Writer” Bunn states “You are already an author.” He’s basically saying that any form of writing we have done such as past essays, paragraphs, poems etc makes us an author already. This is because we already have a “built-in advantage when reading like a writer” Bunn then continues. Because you have already written many things throughout your time in school, this contributes to your acknowledgment and choices you’ll make when writing. In my opinion this is accurate because in the last few months of school when I would have to complete a writing assignment, I usually would write off what I already know about writing and would utilize improved techniques I recently learned as well. I can say recent essays and paragraphs I’ve completed have helped my writing skills improve by a ton. When reading in writing class I would look out for the context, the purpose and the intended audience. This is significant when reading because it’ll determine techniques you will and will not use in your writing. An advice Bunn highlights in the article is to “carefully examine the things you read, looking at writerly techniques in order to decide if you might want to adopt similar techniques.” I would like to try this when reading next time because I think it’s a smart idea and could probably change my writing for the better! Another advice Bunn gives is to “consider the genre of the text.” Genres such as whether the text is a poem, essay, novel, etc. This is important to look out for when reading like a writer because you’ll be able to look for specific things, within the reading, due to the type of genre. This can also affect your writing. 

Notes:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CWNd2um2azT_VGOCUIgwrxO-sxULpyLMezdw9dYUV9s/edit