Final Reflection

Samantha Canales

Final Portfolio

05/16/22

Unit One: Education Narrative

For my revision of my education narrative for unit one, I revised a lot of the punctuation and grammar. I noticed a lack of proofreading and comma splices are my greatest enemy, I have never noticed that I would make those mistakes with the commas. The feedback from Professor Cole was very helpful, shining light on mistakes that I constantly made in my grammar that I had no idea were problems. Now I must use her corrections as tips and as very useful advice to keep in my mind how important it is to proofread carefully and familiarize myself more with grammar rules and punctuation notations. The feedback I incorporated was something so obvious I didn’t think it was me committing the errors or ignoring the squiggly lines, but it was so now that’s my main priority to eliminate those lines and correct my mistakes.

I can still remember the warm air and the fall breeze, and the butterflies in my stomach as I was walking towards my high school with my iced coffee in hand. Why must I always feel this way? I’m a senior now and I wonder why I’m so nervous if I have friends, I suppose everything meaning my senior year would turn out all right. Then I remembered this year was when I applied to college, it was time to finally meet with my advisors, and time to visit the college office. My family gets super excited when it comes to college, I am the second child, and my older sister and I have been planning this moment forever my whole life all I could remember was stressing over which college I’d attend. All the conversations I’ve been having with my friends and peers have been about college, “Sam, Cuny, or Suny?” students constantly fight over which college is the best. I ask myself has this whole department of education wired us to be like robots believing college was the first step to life. I refuse to believe such absurdity, maybe that’s just my mindset.

Considering I am first gen, I’ve begun to realize and develop so much pressure, not only from my school and personal life but my home life. Being the second child of four, not only makes me one of the older siblings but the one who must follow in my older sister’s footsteps. Attending Barnard was a stretch for me, but the next step in my sister’s life. High school was all about preparing me for college it feels like I’ve been a soldier training for so long and finally waiting for the next combat truck to take me to my first mission. I know it’s ok to not know what you want to be when you grow up, that’s what life and college are for. Honestly, why haven’t we been taught to become something else than the American dream? To have a family, a proper education, and to be successful. How come social media influencers on Tik Tok who didn’t even apply to college are living such a lavish and successful life, by doing what? Oh yes, posting videos of them dancing. Why aren’t we taught in school how to do basic life things, for example filing our taxes, that would be helpful. But instead, why does it feel like a competition, to be the best at a subject, to have the highest score, or to be the lead role in a play why are we constantly fighting and working so hard to be at the top; Is it ok to not go to college?  Is it ok to not be the best? These questions kept bombarding my head and I needed to know that I had a plan for myself.

Late nights, crying, not sleeping, sweating, I began balding, I told myself that this would all be worth it in the end. I wanted to become a successful biomedical technician in my family and work in the city with the smartest people I could know. That is what I wanted in life and what I most strived for, I realized I was hungry for the feeling of acceptance and triumph. Applying to college was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. The reason for this was, that not only did I apply to various CUNY and SUNY colleges it was all about sending in my SAT scores and grades, even the recommendation letters I had gathered at the end of my junior year.  I mean how is this normal? can you imagine this? On top of applying to college, you had to excel in extracurricular activities such as sports, music, or the arts. Here I am auditioning to be a leader in “west side story” and having two music classes on top of my also very hard two AP classes. Although my college advisors were great and super helpful to me, the more I stressed about this college process the more I began to doubt it.

There was one thing I knew for certain, the feeling of graduating with a diploma in my hand and with my future dream school two months away, which by the way was Stony Brook University. If I had to say one thing of many, I would thank all my teachers in all my years of education from grade school to high school. Some teachers only cared about your results and how you made them look, but some didn’t care about the tests and cared about your knowledge. Being a student, you can distinguish between the two aspects of teaching. That’s why I was so proud of myself when I opened my acceptance letter to the Stony Brook class of 2024. This whole moment of my life felt like forever waiting for this moment, waiting to finally leave home, and waiting finally begin life, and that’s when I realized. College isn’t about starting life; it’s about guiding you to live it’s about “firsts” this whole time I shouldn’t have focused on the best college but the best fit for me. A place where I should excel and grow and develop my end-educative goals. So that’s why I decided to decline my offer, reject housing and I was fully committed to travel. Although the high school has never taught us about the gap year or spoken in-depth about it, how students decide to work for a year or go off and do their own thing, I decided to travel. I left home for a year and a half, living, and getting to know the beautiful countries of Costa Rica and Brazil.

Having the greatest realization from the education system was that you can become anything, and you have an endless number of possibilities out there in the world. Although I am already in college, I’ve told myself that there is no need to rush to be the best or to finish first but to open my mind to whom I want to become. There are aspects of life beyond our control, for example, what we end up doing after high school and who become forms our society. This all correlates to who we end up being as a society, a bigger aspect such as New York City. So, let’s all just take the joy of life and absorb every detail we come to learn about.

Unit Two: How Has Covid-19 Affected Parents and Students Regarding the Education System?

Unit two was one of the hardest pieces from this class that I have ever written, not because of the information or the quantity of the words but of the format of this paper the MLA style which I know I must get accustomed to and very familiar with. The revisions were very helpful to me to improve my writing. Once revising it I had the opportunity to hear my voice in a research paper. This is where I noticed and applied one of the articles we had read in class, stating how we are all writers. My voice sounds so different here compared to my unit three video or my unit one essay. This paper is an eye-opener for me in viewing my problems in writing, which would be grammar and presenting my thoughts in an organized manner.

The worldwide pandemic that hit New York City in 2019 was one of the scariest times for my family and me. When schools closed in March it almost felt like a wake-up call letting me know that I was living through a pandemic that would make history. I began to wonder how other families were holding up if they had jobs, how could other families afford rent if they needed someone to take care of their children and if they couldn’t leave them alone at home. How were students doing based on their grade level?  Then it hit me, how has covid-19 affected parents and students, specifically in the education system. I remember learning in school about the Black Death, killing millions of Europeans during the Middle Ages. When masks started coming into the picture, I remember wearing the most protective mask when going out to buy groceries. The panic in people was very evident my family started stocking up our food pantry. I was starting to see myself as one of the plague doctors, who wore a mask with a bird-like beak to protect them from being infected by the Black Death. Flashback to when my sisters would choose me to stand on the longest Trader Joe’s line to hold our spot.

There were also many obstacles some families had to face going through many situations. Then I started to think of those from the upper class, were they worried? Did they also have to panic for toilet paper? Or were they all just going about their same lives? I wondered how this could be possible the difference in social classes in New York, yet how close we are to each other. For example, I live in Gravesend, Brooklyn, and fifteen minutes away from me are the projects. A lot of people know that those areas are not the best for children or families. I wondered how the government was going to react to all the closing of businesses and how many employees were going to remain unemployed. This all would be a lot of stress for families and children because where else would they be but at home. It’s very important to keep children at a younger age active and what was going to be the outcome for parents who were about to have a heavier workload.

I am interested in this topic because this is the only pandemic that I have been through. I want to know how other families were doing other than financially but most importantly mentally. In my research, I expect to find families striving for better ways to teach their children and making their home a better learning space also for youth studying in high school or college. I also expect the students to have a hard time during this time, but I want to know the more time passes during the pandemic what are activities or things that help children and the people at home cope with the social distancing and lack of employment. If I find something that is far beyond my hypothesis, I will be very surprised too because I was one of those youth struggling to finish my senior year, I know what it was like to go to school one day and to come back one year later to collect my things from my locker already graduated.

How did each student from each social class do with online learning? I know when you were learning at home, you had to have your quiet place where you would focus and do schoolwork, but I also do know kids didn’t have that space at home. What was very useful is that some internet services would provide Wi-Fi for your home if you were a student and didn’t have access to Wi-Fi, or the department of education would loan devices. This undertakes so many of my questions for the upper class, were they even affected at all? Did the families worry about getting infected? Or how this would affect their children’s education? I do plan on challenging my assumptions.

Sanrey, Camille, et al. “A Two-Sided Lockdown? Social Class Variations in the Implementation of Homeschooling during the COVID-19 Lockdown.” Frontiers, Frontiers, 1 Jan. 1AD,

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.670722/full.

The pandemic has changed the way we live, travel, and interact as well as learn and teach. One consequence of this pandemic has been school closures. From a purely medical perspective, such closures appear both necessary and inevitable, this article points out the important consequences they may have in terms of children’s learning and achievement and, more largely, academic inequalities. The research article, “Social Class Variations in the Implementation of Homeschooling During the COVID-19 lockdown, 2021), states, “This situation places a heavy responsibility on parents, and recent studies have documented that the lockdown has increased the risk of parental stress and parenting-related exhaustion. In addition, higher levels of depression and anxiety have been observed among parents and children than in normal times.” We see that in this article, not only did students have to adapt to online learning but their parents were able to homeschool them. This pandemic not only affected families physically but also mentally some students did not feel well knowing that they were learning via a laptop and zoom meetings, and parents felt the stress they had with not only providing for their family but also the responsibility of their children’s education at home.  The research also states regarding the parents and children their social class, the lower the parent’s social position, the lower the digital equipment and the less the parents felt capable of homeschooling. Finally, the higher the social position of the families, the more children spent time doing activities that were educational than those from the lower class that as not educational. A survey was taken, and we see that students of the upper class had more attention to their studies and way of learning from their parents or other resources they had the opportunities with such as devices or open spaces. Even if all parents were involved in helping their children with learning, higher social position parents were better equipped both materially and psychologically to face the challenge of homeschooling.

One way would be the process of online school, a new form of way of learning for students who had never experienced zoom meetings and online test-taking. Now had to make it their daily education, resulting in parents taking roles as educators. The start of the pandemic was not easy at all, people were going crazy, schools shut down, some students did not have Wi-Fi at home, families were moving, people were getting fired, and businesses were closing. Those that belonged to the upper class did not get to suffer as much as the working class and the lower class. Students had to depend more on their parents from the middle class and lower, “By making learning rely more heavily on parents, school closures not only increase the risk of parental stress and burnout, but they also create very uneven learning situations among children.”

The problem was working and staying home at the same time to make sure their child was learning adequately in a proper learning space. The upper class felt physically and more psychologically prepared to take this task, while the other classes felt stressed and fell into depression. I would like to point out the differences in social classes via homeschooling during the pandemic. I believe students of all upper classes should have the opportunity to earn without the lack of Wi-Fi and a device so they could do their work. Parents needed a warning, how about some classes for the parents on how to handle this going on at home, or something to at least guide them. “For example, in the United States in 2019, 41% of working-class families did not own a computer, compared to 8% of upper-middle-class families”. Upper-middle-class families not only live better with more space to study, but they also have better digital equipment. Although this problem regarding digital equipment between classes has decreased over time, working-class families are still less equipped than upper-middle-class families. Making them more likely to be partially or excluded from the digital world. The authors of this article seem very credible, they are doctors with a Ph.D. degree, making them very professional in their field. This article makes me want to better understand the activities that were being done, and what activities did not work for children, I feel like real live testimonies would have helped the research from any background, considering this was a research article it was very vast and informative. The authors had a very serious tone and a concerning tone toward those whom they wanted to inform.

“Thus, even if all parents were highly involved in homeschooling, higher social position parents were better equipped both materially and psychologically to face the challenge of homeschooling.”

“In addition, higher levels of depression and anxiety have been observed among parents and children than in normal times. All these difficulties, due in large part to the fact parents had to homeschool their children, are particularly true for working-class parents.”

‘Social class is a powerful context of life and socialization associated with diverse material, cultural, and psychological resources that constitute (dis)advantages for many aspects of schooling.”

Long, Bridget. Covid and Education: Challenges, Opportunities, and the … – YouTube. 30 Mar. 2021,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KlzTEl8ATo.

The video indicates that the pandemic has affected students in many ways from students in the lower class and lower grades, but also the future of learning and students in higher learning. For students in higher learning who have been facing difficulties, schools are more than just physical buildings that provide the education they provide food, they provide activities, leadership, and what a school should be as a guide to life. The video states that community-based organizations play an important role in supporting, even distracting students from their stress in handing in work or with coping the amount of school workload, activities in the community protect students beyond the school day. “The COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest disruption of education systems in history, affecting nearly 1.6 billion learners in more than 190 countries and all continents. Closures of schools and other learning spaces have impacted 94% of the world’s student population, up to 99% in low and lower-middle-income countries,’ (United Nations Policy Brief, August. 2020). This was a stat mentioned by Dr. Terry, we see how the pandemic completely caused an abruption in the educational system. It is much more than which type of social class you belong to, but the pandemic affected the whole world. Stressing how important teachers and educators are in students’ lives, they not only educate but provide social and emotional support to students. Something very evident was the lack of students that went missing and reported themselves to their classes. There was also less freshman enrollment that upcoming fall. “Initially, we were worried about missing students, so last spring when many schools had to pivot to remote education very quickly, data showed us that many students were not logging into their systems they could not be located. The Boston public schools say 1 in 5 students were virtual dropouts.” Dr. Bridget Terry makes many good points, regarding the closures of schools, and how fast teachers and educators had to adapt to online learning, and online teaching. She makes it very evident how concerning this information is, statistically and what data shows. Also, many universities were mentioned, considering she is a dean at Harvard. Students in college were mainly affected mentally, affecting their mental health, a survey was taken, and most college students had unlocked new traumas because they returned home from campus life. Proving that College is not just a place or a building, but it is where a student body gets together to educate and learn and become one, the students and educators make up the college or private university. “What we have certainly seen during the experience of COVID is the schools, the principles, the education leaders who have been more proactive and moved more quickly in realizing the new reality that we were in have been the most successful in addressing student’s needs, waiting to pivot was a recipe for disaster both in the k-12 and higher education level” (Long, Terry Bridget). Because of the pandemic not only has it totally caught the whole educational system off guard but once realized that this would become the new reality, we see how this has impacted educators to change their learning style, the way they communicate with the students as well. It has been an important lesson, shifting the mindset to view it as an opportunity

It’s true distance no longer must matter the same way; online learning is so much more now than how it started. There are so many more platforms that educators use, as well that students enjoy. Because of online learning and online teaching, we can have teachers from all over the world. You don’t need to be in the same building as us, our students. I feel like this helped evolve technology, specifically learning at a completely higher level. “There weren’t any more problems about fitting students in classrooms anymore”, it practically felt like you were sitting in the front row the whole time in the classroom. I am very surprised at how compelling this video was the dean of Harvard explains how much the education system has evolved because of the pandemic and the sudden change of learning styles.  One of my biggest questions would be, how did students find the resources to cope with stress or anxiety or the independency to complete schoolwork? we see how capable each student is on their own, or we see how the school can get hard on college students that are on their own, seeing in the data the lack of freshmen in the fall. I don’t understand how educators still managed to teach and grade while also connecting to the student. I feel like the connection is very important in a classroom, more like face-to-face contact. I feel like Zoom and the online class put that up to the test, it was hard at first, but it just made it something new to adapt to. Dr. Terry was amazing and explained the future of education and the current problems of education from K-12 to higher-level learning.

I feel like other valuable information to better understand this presentation at a conference would be the immersive experience of educators like an interview we saw how there were surveys involved via from college students. But it would also be very informative how teachers and staff felt in the actual school building when returning, or what specific staff did not return for reasons. I have many questions for the speaker regarding her school community, which is Harvard students I could imagine how prestigious the curriculum must be if the education improved or weakened from that university. Also, how did the student body feel learning college-level courses online, or how was lab class even done. Here Dean Bridget long presents an overview of the impact and lessons of the global coronavirus pandemic on the field of education. The conference is meant to link learning with leadership and drive change in the world. She comes from the Harvard graduate school of education, which has been training leaders to transform education in the United States and around the globe. The main things we see are the most critical challenges facing education would be student assessments, the achievement gap, urban education, and even possibly teacher shortages. Not only were parents and students affected but the whole educational system around the globe were affected by this pandemic. We see here the importance of acting and thinking fast, getting straight to the point of remote learning. The rhetorical factors would be the genre of this video which was very informative to students and faculty and all those who were affected by this remote learning. The speaker is a dean at Harvard University, this video was posted on Harvard’s YouTube channel which got almost 26,000 views. She wants everyone to know how much education has evolved and the downsides of the pandemic through education, students, and the families at home.

“This time the impact of COVID all that we have learned gives us an opportunity for a whole new re-imagined future.”

“We are not returning to the status quo ante. The field will show permanent changes as a result of this crisis and our adaptations to it… Because of this experience parents, students and teachers will be seeking profound changes in the way education operates in the future.” – Prof. Paul Reville, Francis Keppel Professor of Educational Policy and Administration

“Focusing on the essentials allows opportunities for teachers to go deeper, create space, to form relationships build communities, just think very deliberately about how they are connecting with students and how they are engaging and deeper learning.”

Ellis, Sarah. “Mental Health Effects of Covid-19 on High School & College Students.”, Mental Health Effects of COVID-19 on High School & College Students, Health Central 31 Aug. 2020,

https://www.healthcentral.com/article/mental-health-effects-of-covid-19-on-students.

Students from low-income and working-class backgrounds were more likely than their peers to experience food insecurity and housing insecurity. Also had higher rates of generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder and academic obstacles during the transition to remote learning, such as lack of access to study spaces, technology, advising, and learning services. There was an abrupt shift to remote learning that affected students, negatively impacting their social and emotional well being affecting their achievement. A study shows that “A recent CDC report of 5,400 people found that 25% of respondents between the age of 18-24 had contemplated suicide in the previous 30 days. Jennifer Rothman, senior manager of youth and young adult initiatives at the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) in Arlington, Virginia, notes that the NAMI hotline has seen a significant increase in calls over the last few months. “We’re hearing more calls about anxiety, a lot of stress and depression,” she says”.  It is astonishing how many young ones have been mentally affected because of self-isolation or online learning. The pressure is still on to be the best student to perform your best even when students had to go through this major transition of being alone in their room or possibly even sharing study space and learning from a computer screen. It is comforting knowing that teens call for help, they do need that reassurance to hear knowing that they’re not alone and that what they’re doing now is their best and they should be proud of that during these difficult times. Research shows that long periods of loneliness can destroy mental and physical health outcomes over time, leading to depression and even chronic disease. Here we must suppress how important mental health is for students and society in general. In this physiologic article, we see “social isolation has taken a toll on young people, many of whom have been out of traditional school for six months now. They face “the uncertainty of, ‘when is school going to go back?’ she says. “When can we see our friends and hug them?”. The structure of life or the idea almost completely vanished overnight.  A 20-year-old student, Kelly Maguire a junior at Florida Gulf Coast University, shared her thoughts based on how she felt during these difficult times. “When we hear the word grief, we tend to think of the death of a loved one or somebody close,” she says–a tragically frequent occurrence since COVID-19 began. “On top of that, there’s the grief of losing your sense of normalcy, routine, and social connections.” During COVID-19, not only was society suffering from social distancing but from losses in the family, the family members who were being affected by the virus. Humans needed the connection of physical touch to be with each other during these hard times. The student Ms. Maguire felt a loss of normalcy and her routines. A switch in her life that no one expected.

This article to me is not surprising, mental health has always been very important in this world, and society. The pandemic was not something easy to overcome or something fast that has been blown by the world. COVID19 a worldwide pandemic affected society in so many ways all at the same time.  There was a change in our daily lives from employees, educators, students, parents, and business owners, our lives changed completely. What Kelly Maguire said is very true, not only are you grieving with family or viewing how many losses there are in this world from the cause of the virus but to top it all off you can’t see your friends anymore sometimes people become your home. Students had to go back home due to campus closing and facing living conditions or relationships that did not support them during these difficult times. It was a literal goodbye to our normalcy and the uncertainty of what normally would be considered when things were a little better. I would want to see data on the ground of ages that started having sessions since the pandemic started. Then we will see if not only young people suffered mentally and needed support from a therapist, but adults could have been increased in amount when going to therapy for their mental health. I feel like that could be very useful. I feel like this paper was very informative regarding the mental health of young ones, and how we can be there to support and look for resources. This document informs my research in a way where the readers as in my audience can see how important mental health is to even continue with life. Depression and anxiety and many more mental disorders are very important to diagnose, and the audience must know that this is not something you play around with. Also, how to treat someone who is mentally ill or mentally diagnosed with a mental illness, people should know how to speak to someone who is going through something in their mind. It is very important to watch what we say when we know someone who is mentally ill.

The Health line website is all about mental health, this author is well informed of the information provided in this article, giving an insight into the mental health of teens and younger ones because of social distancing and pressure. Mental health is something serious and something that should be looked after on the regular. The author’s writing style sounds very informative. Aiming for the attention of the audience to be aware of the importance of the mental health of young adults. The purpose of this article was to inform readers about how to be with someone specifically students who have been taken away from their normal lives. Implementing social distancing and the pandemic. It is an eye-opener to other parents or people who want to know how to be there for their young adults in the house, I think young adults are missing that in-person time with their peers. That’s a huge adjustment for students on top of the fear of the virus. And it also stresses how important students need to understand the situation and how students must work together to make sure that they’re able to learn in a safe environment. Providing advice for parents which is very relevant to providing a listening ear to their teens, providing them some space too. This is a credible source because it also teaches about what signs a person shows when going through a mental health crisis.

“What families want to look for is changes in behaviors, personality changes,” Rothman says. “If your child isn’t talking to you as much anymore, or spending a lot of time by themselves,” that’s a red flag, especially if they’re not taking time to connect with their friends virtually.

“Now that you’ve helped your student feel more comfortable expressing themselves, it’s time to take concrete action. Don’t just offer up a list of counseling services. “Ask questions to help your young adult explore the different ideas for where help can come from,” Horne says.”

Gupta’s best advice for parents is to just provide a listening ear. “Sometimes when we’re very stressed out with school and all the things we’re juggling, we don’t feel like talking much,” she says. Parents can acknowledge that by simply saying, “I’m here when you’re ready to talk,” and allowing their child some space. “You’re putting the ball in their court, so they get to decide when they’re ready to have that conversation with you,” Gupta explains–even if it doesn’t happen right away.

COVID-19 “the worldwide pandemic” has affected the whole world entirely, from mental health to isolation, to job losses, to financial gaining, and a lack of freshmen entering college. Students in the lower social class/hard-working class had a difficult time learning and educating themselves during the pandemic because they did not have a proper space to study as a result of unstable homes and unstable surroundings. Students in the upper class had more resources to devices such as computers and tablets and a proper space to study, as well as healthier activities giving them a healthier mindset during the pandemic. What surprised me was how researchers made it imperative regarding mental health, and how the educational system completely changed their learning styles in weeks to begin educating online. It is very incredible how educators, teachers, and staff members of schools came together to form a student body online. My question deepened based on the educational system first, I started by talking about social classes. But as we all may know higher classes of society have more options and more resources than the lower class or hard-working class, so I changed my question to students and parents during the pandemic regarding the educational system.

What has always been important to me is mental health maybe I’ve been too ignorant and ignoring my mental health. But I have always been aware of the people around me who are depressed or are diagnosed with anxiety or go through ADHD or ADD, so I witnessed the difficulties they were going through during this pandemic. Not only has learning been an important factor but also that they were alone their whole lives have changed completely including mind students, young people, adults, and elderly had to completely change their style of living. Mental health is also very important to those who are older than 25 isolations must’ve been hard for those who lost their jobs, or who are struggling to pay rent, I learned that it is very important to adapt to the world as it keeps on changing. My specific audience would be in this paper, parents of students of any age. Students from a K-12 grade to a higher education level, and to students who have parents that would help with the online learning of their younger sibling. It also could be targeted at families I would say, during this pandemic families had to depend on each other, considering you couldn’t go outside and socialize with your friends. It was a time to get to know one another mentally, physically, and emotionally, and be there for each other via education as well. As we can see COVID-19 affected parents and students not only through education but in every way possible.

Unit Three: New genre

What I would have liked to change about my video would be the setting of the interviewer and the mistake I made during half of the video where it showed, “write the text”. This video was much harder than expected. I expected to just pull out my phone and start recording but last minute I had to incorporate my sister and it was just a very funny recording experience. I truly hope the viewers viewed it as something serious just like the topic itself is very important.  

https://youtu.be/7ZpkH7bxyDk

Final Reflection

What I have learned about myself as a reader is I’ve become a better listener. I never thought about how reading correlates to listening to a person talking to me or having an engaging conversation. I realized the lack of focus I have when I’m reading or when I’m talking about something that does not interest me. Reading is harder than expected and for those who read all the time, I get where they’re coming from on how it plays like a movie inside their head. I’ve portrayed it like this, books make your brain do the literal work for you to map out and imagine the whole scene. While movies or films show you the story right in front of you and there is no thinking involved. Reading is almost like tackling a math problem step by step, and that’s where I excel at. Tackling a book chapter by chapter was very fun when I re-read Orlando by Virginia Woolf for like the third time. I started listening to the author more, how she styled the writing in the book, the tone, and why the characters had specific personalities.  Improving my reading skills has been a huge accomplishment for me. Thus, increasing my confidence to have better and longer conversations with people. I’ve noticed that I have been having more conversations at work with customers, and that’s something I wouldn’t do before, I would pick too low, and no one could hear me because of my mask. My goal is to keep o reading and familiarize myself with my inner voice and be more attentive to the small details of literature.

Realizing I was a writer, in my way was a major realization for me. I wouldn’t validate my writing in my texts or my writing in many of my daily activities. I’ve learned that it’s hard for me to write all my thoughts on paper and I shouldn’t let this fear that sometimes overcomes me in my writing. Writing comes spontaneously to me when I am typing on my laptop with no intention of sharing it with anyone else. The moment when I decide to write something for school, my writing loses its guts and splatters all over the screen. I had this fear of judgment, which I no longer have. I realized that the only person who should feel validated in my writing is myself. After editing it like a hundred times then I will know it’s readable and personal.  A quote from my unit one paper says, “But instead, why does it feel like a competition, to be the best at a subject, to have the highest score, or to be the lead role in a play why are we constantly fighting and working so hard to be at the top; Is it ok to not go to college?”. Professor Cole has shown me that there is never a competition in life or class or college, the ideal competition is your mind. I wanted to grow my writing biceps and that is what I will always strive for. Something I have also discovered is that I write better when listening to music because it helps me feel emotional, any type of emotion from sad to happy or hype. I have now developed a checklist of things to check before turning in a paper. Writing comes with practice, and when you keep on writing I feel like things become easier when it comes to grammar or catching the small mistakes I would tend to make, or possibly making new mistakes and overcoming the comma slices I can’t seem to get rid of.  Writing has helped me understand myself, and uncover many of my curiosities, for example, the research project from unit two, it had opened a curiosity I had in the back of my mind. Something that I would like to continue improving on during my college years and further on would be the reduction of my words, for example by saying a lot with a minimal number of words. May this class be the as to all my writing classes yet to come.

This is my first semester of college, so I have learned a lot about myself as a scholar and practically seen a little bit of what’s far into the shoreline.  College is up to oneself; I have learned that here is where I must step up my studying game. I have noticed that I have a hard time starting things, but my goal is to always overcome procrastination in any subject. The organization of time is so essential in college.  I think reality hit me after I had a meeting with my advisor while talking about my future classes. Adult conversations are scary, and they are even more intimidating when your professor still must correct your emails when communicating, so what is why I have taken it upon myself to improve my reading and writing to become a better scholar.  Possibly even undertaking a new learning style, maybe there’s a better learning style out there for me than the way I’m teaching myself right now. By creating a study schedule and a calendar, many successful people have a whole plan for their lives, and I would also like to have the opportunity of being so organized with my time that I can do a lot of study during the day. I can maintain a good schedule being a student, my social life, being at work, and some activities and hobbies that I enjoy.  The last thing I want to say about being a scholar this semester is, what a privilege it has been learning inside a classroom and being a part of a class. Remote learning is not something hard for me but being in a classroom is much more enjoyable to learn.

I believe that English is the foundation of all subjects and classes in education, I can apply what I have learned from this term to all my English classes after all this is English1101. I have learned so much more in my other classes as well, with handing things on time, and proving to the professors what they want to receive, via work. This English class has given me the basis to improve my other writing during my college. years and further into my education. Also, on how to judge my writing and my thinking differently and from a different point of view other than a writer but also as a viewer.  Reading in class has led me to believe in my writing persona. To compare my work has been stable in my opinion. I don’t think my work has progressed which is the downside of my opinion, but I also know that my work has not become worse because the semester is ending. I feel like my research has improved because of this class, as well as my annotations to a writing piece. A quote from my research article states, “My question deepened based on the educational system first, I started by talking about social classes. But as we all may know higher classes of society have more options and more resources than the lower class or hard-working class, so I changed my question to students and parents during the pandemic regarding the educational system.” Never in a million years would I have changed my topic out of the blue. I am a person who sets one’s topic and writes from there, but this is where I have realized that my writing has evolved. I also take professor revisions very seriously. I care about comma slices now and back then I had no idea what they were.

My least favorite assignment was the research paper which was unit two. I have written a science research paper that is not quite different from an English one. I was quite disappointed to find some mistakes that I thought I had mastered a while back. My grammar needs to be improved immensely and that paper just called me out on that. Some notable lessons that have stuck with me after completing assignment one would be that we all are writers. And most of us write in a different voice for different situations we write differently on our Instagram stories or thesis, I sent a different type of email to my professor than I do to my friend. And I think this is fascinating it’s just a continuation of the idea that we are so many things all the time. What changed in my writing during each different assignment and genre was the thinking that started it all. My thoughts changed my writing and reading, it was almost like a switch went off in my brain of how to word by writing and how to read formally or not formally at all, even writing emails to Professor Cole taught me a lesson. Another quote from my serious writing would be in the research paper, “Here we must suppress how important mental health is for students and society in general. In this physiologic article, we see “social isolation has taken a toll on young people, many of whom have been out of traditional school for six months now.” My voice in this writing is completely different from how I speak, it almost sounds like the tone in my unit three video. I think my unit one paper has been more personal to me and sounds more like my voice. I made decisions in my assignment through the genre. The design and the content were all based on the genre and the research. The articles, we have read in class guided me and as an example of the research paper, we’re all like a guide and a template for my decisions in my assignment.

My earliest assumptions and beliefs about myself and writing were always very low. I speak three languages and sometimes English is not as easy as the other two that I know. I feel like the writing tests your knowledge in your organization of thoughts. My assumptions about me being a writer have completely changed since the beginning of the semester, I have been taught to believe that I am a writer with a unique voice and a unique point of view, and I want the audience to come across it as well. I am not only writing for myself, but I am writing to inform perhaps even to make the audience feel something, and even believe what I’m writing is true. My y experience revising my own work has been truly picking up the pieces one by one and fixing something broken in my opinion. Revision has taught me grammatical errors how to format my paper and how to present my paper. The revisions helped me a lot in viewing my paper and what was missing, I thoughtfully and thoroughly went through every single piece of revision that my professor gave me to see how I can perfect the paper, I admit I did get lazy, but I also admit that I learned many new things not only writing but also revising my work. What was challenging for me in this course and in the semester was it being my first English course in college as well as facing public speaking even though I was not forced to speak. I attempted to overcome the shyness by not staying quiet when called on but speaking my opinion and informing my peers about what I was going to write about or what I had written in the homework. I just want to thank Professor Cole for everything that she has done for me and my class because it has truly been life-changing educationally and even some life lessons were thrown in there. I hope to better my writing day by day by reading more and by improving my grammar which is my goal.