Final Portfolio and Reflection

Unit 1 Educational Narratives Revision: 

After I revised my work I noticed that I rushed it because I did rush to finish this unit assignment at the beginning which I was not supposed to. After reading it the second time,  a lot of the sentence structure and grammar were incorrect and It doesn’t sound right at all. The feedback I got from Professor Cole and my colleagues was that I didn’t know how to use the uppercase and lowercase when I was writing throughout the paragraphs. Professor Cole also mentioned that my education narrative is weakened by my lack of carefulness in my proofreading and organization. I incorporated the mistake that I made throughout this unit project, and I will try to make them better and correct my mistakes.

I still Remember During my sophomore year in High School, it was a spring semester in the afternoon. I did so badly on the writing exams that my English teacher wrote me a letter for me to go to a tutoring center in the school. So everything jumps back to before we even start taking the exam, we have to read this book and were assigned homework to it. And we usually get a small reading quiz the next day when we attend class so the teacher can see which students read and who didn’t read. so I normally never submit the quiz up because I know I will get a zero either way because I didn’t read the assigned pages. I just know that reading books will make me feel overwhelmed so that’s the main reason that I never read. And to the point when we had a writing exam In class, I felt so lost that I looked at the students around me writing nonstop. At that point, my head felt so empty, and questioned myself Why didn’t I read the book. When the tests were all graded and handed back to us, all I heard was students asking and exchanging their exams with other students asking what they got on the test. When I looked at my grade on the exam, I couldn’t say much because I didn’t do what I was assigned to do. I received my exam and a tutoring center paper attached to it saying I need to go check out the tutoring center during my free period, which is my lunch period or after school, and it’s mandatory to go or else I wouldn’t be able to pass this course for this semester. So it gets serious that I have to take action to account for this, right after my English class ends I have lunch afterward. So I went to look for this tutoring center room on the second floor of the building and I showed them the paper that I needed to come here every day during my free period. Then they assigned me a specific teacher to help me throughout the semester, and If I don’t Improve well enough I will have to keep coming here every semester until I get better at my grammar and sentence structure because that’s what I needed to help with most. At first, I was feeling very overwhelmed because I have to show up here every single day during my free period, which is my lunch period. I usually spend my lunch period doing other classes’ homework and studying a little more for tests before the next class begins. So if I have to come here every single day I won’t have a free period to do stuff or to take a break from. The teacher in the tutoring center said that I can go to the cafeteria to get lunch and eat it up here while we do our lessons. It started badly in the beginning because I was skipping days that I didn’t want to come and I was getting a whole lecture by my English teacher saying If you decide to skip again you’re not going to pass this class for this semester, So I didn’t have a choice but go. As time went on It wasn’t as bad as expected, because the tutoring teacher was so nice that she brought lunch for me so I didn’t have to waste time going down to the cafeteria and getting food. And honestly, I’ve had a lot of fun while learning and till this point, I still remembered everything If I can get to choose again I would go there every single day because that teacher was treating me so nicely unlike other teachers.

Another experience I had in high school was my U.S. history class, this happened in the spring semester of my Junior Year of High School. In the previous fall semester, I had another teacher for U.S. history, but I couldn’t understand what they were teaching and I just thought I won’t be able to pass my regents for U.S. history In June. But everything changed after the spring semester came. I had another teacher for U.S history and I heard about people saying he is a really strict teacher and how hard it is to pass his class or do anything in his class. So I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to do well In his class as well, and even more worried about my regents In June which is a few months from January.  This teacher talks loud and tells instructions clearly because he used to serve in the military as a tank officer. I think that is the reason why he treats us strictly because he looked at us as his soldiers. You can skip his class or walk out of his class all you want or even be distracted on your phone, but you have to take responsibility for doing these things because he is not going to repeat or make up for your absences. He assigns homework every day on the website and you have to print them out yourself every day and do them. He is not going to print them out for you like other teachers are doing in High school. It is your responsibility to have your homework done and prepared for the next class because we will discuss it in class and If you don’t have it then You won’t be able to participate in the class discussions. Overall I like this teacher because he Changed the way I look at things and even motivated me to be an even better student. He taught us that no one Is going to be on your back watching out for you, you always have to be prepared at all times. If you’re not prepared For war then you wouldn’t be able to survive and will get eliminated. I was not the type of student to do well in class and do homework or study for my test until I had this teacher for the semester. I tried to be more disciplined today to Improve myself every day.

I know we always have that day off and don’t feel like doing anything for the day but laying down and sleeping, but time doesn’t stop for us. We have to keep going and working because We have to keep up with ourselves and compete with ourselves every day to Improve.

Unit 2 RAB revision:  How do Astrology zodiac signs affect your personality traits?

After finishing revising my RAB, I notice that there are still grammar and sentence structure issues. Because I didn’t go over my work after I completed it. There wasn’t much information for me to pull due to the lack of research out there. and after reading the feedback from Professor Cole and my colleagues, I was missing a lot of information and I wasn’t following directions and missing source entries along with not completing each bullet point for this unit assignment.

How do Astrology zodiac signs affect your personality traits? There has not been a certified answer relating to how astrology has an impact on our personality traits. But we do know that there is always a positive and negative characteristic of every zodiac sign. And different signs seem to display different characteristics.

“Every zodiac sign is associated with positive and negative characteristics; this tension compels life forward and outlines the journey from youth to maturity.” – By Laken Howard https://www.bustle.com/p/how-does-astrology-affect-your-personality-the-one-thing-people-look-up-to-you-for-based-on-your-zodiac-sign-2443233

Constellation culture meets people’s psychological needs in at least two ways.  The first is the need for a sense of belonging.  People need to divide themselves into a certain group to feel the security brought by the collective and avoid the unease caused by loneliness.  The second is auxiliary decision-making.  Since ancient times, human beings have been seeking to help themselves make various decisions using divination and prophecy, asking God for divination and other acts.  Because human personality is multi-faceted, everyone has many personality characteristics, and these personality characteristics will belong to different constellation templates.  For any constellation, as long as they can find the characteristics that match the description for one or two days, many people will think that the constellation is accurate, and ignore other characteristics that do not match.  When people are told that their character “should” belong to a certain template, they may form a psychological suggestion to move closer to that template in their future lives.

Another research has shown that a Renowned psychologist Hans Eysenck and a British astrologer have jointly conducted a study.  This astrologer has many students, and he asked more than 2,000 students to provide him with their birth dates and to participate in filling out a questionnaire on Hans Eysenck’s personality.  According to the results of the survey, those whose zodiac signs are related to extraversion score significantly higher than others on the extroverted personality trait, and those whose zodiac sign is related to introversion also score higher than others on the introverted personality trait. In addition, people with earth signs score very high in mentality and emotions.  In other words, this survey is almost the same as the ancient legend, which surprised many skeptics of astrology.  However, Hans Eysenck does not think so. After analyzing the statistics, he found that almost all the people who participated in the survey believed in astrology, and they had already known about these astrology legends, which affected the survey results to a certain extent, because  Respondents felt that they should have certain astrological traits, and were “forced” to admit certain traits that were not very prominent, leading to surprising consistency in the findings of the Yu legend.  So, Hans Eysenck conducted another set of experiments, this time the test subjects were a group of children who did not know the relationship between horoscopes and personalities. The results came to the opposite conclusion. These children had nothing to do with their constellations in terms of scores.  The horoscope does not affect their character at all.

 It can be seen that the astrology of a person at birth does not have any influence on his personality, and almost all influences come from the day after tomorrow.  In reality, those who know astrology very well can unknowingly become the type of person described in their zodiac sign.  This research by Hans Eysenck has undoubtedly brought a lot of impact on the astrology community. Many people expressed their resistance, which led to astrology suppressing Hans Eysenck’s research conclusion.

After using an article for the first source entry, this time I decided to use a video for my second source entry. As I do my research, I found a video on Youtube for my research questions. In the video name “How does your Zodiac sign Influence your personality” by Autumn Asphodel, At the beginning of the video she was introducing all twelve zodiac signs and described what they are and if they match your personality traits or if you checked your horoscope about your signs and the events that are will happen to you today were accurate to you. For the people who believe in horoscopes, they might think it will be more accurate for them than for those people who don’t believe in horoscopes because it all comes down to their interpretations and how much it relates to your life. In addition, how much do you know about yourself? If you search up your signs and read the description describing yourself, you might think it describes pretty well and accurately and if you search up another sign of your friend or you simply just want to know more about it, you might also think it suits them pretty well as well. Your zodiac signs are based on your date of birth and if you’re a strong believer in horoscopes you might believe what your sign describes you and if you don’t you might not believe it at all. I am a Pisces myself, and I think the personality traits that describe this sign suit me very well. Because Pisces is a water sign and water signs are usually more emotional than other elemental signs. not every trait of Pisces describes me exactly the way it is but to a certain extent you can somehow believe half in it because if you don’t know yourself too well, you might discover something interesting about your zodiac signs that suit your personality trait. Many times your zodiac signs will fit you but not always because since everybody is different it won’t describe or define everybody the same way as your signs are supposed to. And If you read about your horoscopes when you wake up in the morning about how your day will go based on your signs, you will see a description saying what events will happen to you today or what you feel like you might want to do today. You can always change It and go the opposite of what your horoscopes are telling you, so it’s better to check it after your day ends and see If it’s accurate or not. You can use it as a reference but shouldn’t fully believe In It, since your thoughts are very powerful and you can change the way you think and how your day will go.

For the last source entry, I chose a movie genre, I use spirited away from Ghibli movies. This movie has a lot of different types of meanings and it describes the astrology sign Pisces a lot because at the beginning of the movie it started by playing soft piano music in the background and showing a postcard written by “Lily”. Which is “Chihiro”, the main character’s best friend. Chihiro is moving to a new place, but she doesn’t want to move to the new place because she missed her best friend Lily. She is not excited to move and live in a new place. Even though Chihiro’s dad was telling Chihiro that “we’re almost there”. But the background and everything is blurry but the flowers and postcard holding Chihiro’s hand. This shows that Chihiro cares more about her best friend Lily than adapting to a new lifestyle because Pisces values memories and good times spent together rather than adapting to something new. She is laying down on the back of the car with facial emotions that are depression.  While her dad and mom are looking around saying how pretty the houses were at the front while driving, Chihiro is hiding from the future by keeping herself in the backseat of the car by herself and ignoring what her dad and mom were saying to her. After she holds the flowers that Lily got her so hard that she thought she ruined it and got so upset simply because Lily got that for her and she doesn’t want to lose the last thing that Lily gave her. After Chihiro entered the fantasy world that she and her parents got into, she met Haku outside of the building because Chihiro was walking around not knowing what this place is. But Haku was so shocked because since Chihiro is a human it will get dangerous as it gets late. After all, all the spirits will show up in town and Haku was trying to help Chihiro to get away and get to somewhere that is safe for her. This is a sign of kindness because once Pisces get close to you or know that you’re not a threat to them they will show kindness and love to you. Chihiro has to adapt to the culture and the lifestyle in that spiritual world or else she wouldn’t be able to live. Pisces are used to doing things that they are comfortable with, so adapting to a whole new lifestyle is a hard choice for Chihiro since she doesn’t know anything in that world until later on in the movie. In that world, nobody recognizes their name so It took a while for Chihiro to recognize her name and Haku helped her to remember what her name was at the end of the movie because they’ve both met when they were very little and at the beginning of the scene, Haku did mention that he feels like he saw her somewhere before. This whole movie relates to the astrology sign Pisces a lot because there are a lot of scenes that show a lot of passionate things and how people helped each other with kindness even though Chihiro is from a different world than them and she is Human. Most people in that spiritual world still tried to get along with her in the end and that shows the kindness of who we are. Even though they don’t know each other they still tried to help Chihiro to survive in that world. And as long as you are nice to other people they will do the same thing in return.

After doing this research and all the information that I’ve gathered throughout this entire research project. I have learned that your astrology sign doesn’t define who you are as a person or your personality. It depends on the way you see it, for example, some people believe in horoscopes that they check every day about their signs and see what events will happen to them today and the negative or positive things that will happen to them today. If you’re someone who believes In horoscopes then it somehow can affect who you are as a person. But If you’re someone that doesn’t believe In astrology and horoscopes then none of these should apply to you. Your thoughts can change everything. According to the first source entry, your astrology signs don’t change the way you act, but because of some traits that you have and you know about It and you looked up your astrology sign, your mind will place you In your astrology sign category and think that It’s accurate. I think that we shouldn’t fully believe in astrology because there are not scientifically proven things for us to fully look at. And the lack of information about this topic is very hard for people who try to research because people need to spend more time looking for more reliable research. Every sign has its pro and cons, that’s why some signs can get along with each other, and some just can’t. Everybody’s mind process differently and I believe it’s not just because of the Astrology signs that affect you but the way you grew up in your childhood because that plays a huge impact on your personality traits and the way your mind process stuff. Your personality traits can always change, It doesn’t stay the same throughout your entire life journey.

Final Reflection:

The way I would compare the work that we did from the beginning of the semester till now, I would say it gets harder and more challenging for us to handle. The reason why I said it’s more “challenging”, is mainly because the reading level of each article gets harder and we need to understand what the author is trying to tell us in the article in a specific way.  There’s an article that I like called “Mother’s Tongue” by Amy Tan, the reason why I like this article so much is that it relates so much to me. I wasn’t born in America but I grew up here, I came to America when I was at a very young age with my family and it was a difficult time for us, mainly because we need to adapt to a new environment that we are not familiar with and it was a rough time for us. And my mother would have a heavy Chinese accent when she speak English, but that’s the way I grew up hearing it because its my mother’s tongue.

My favorite assignment would be the Unit 1 project “Educational Narratives”, because we get to share our thoughts and experience from our own voice. And it brings back memory whenever I think about the past. My least favorite assignment would be the Unit 2 project the RAB , its not because we need to research and explain so much stuff in detail but because the topic that I am curious about got a very limited amount  of research. I was curious about “How do Astrology zodiac signs affect your personality traits?”. I did learn a lot of information about this topic while doing the research and it was very interesting even though the research information was very limited. The first assignment  of the semester was “The venting assignment”, which was very interesting to write and read because everybody gets to share their thoughts on returning to the campus after the campus reopen and how we feel about this class in general. And My reading and thinking skills definitely improved as the genres and assignments changed. Because the more I read the more I will think about why the author is telling us this?  And it will train my reading and thought process as I read more. But I have not notice any change in my writing skills ever since the beginning of the semester. And Some notable lessons that stuck with me after completing assignments would be to make sure if my grammar and sentence structure is proper. I need to revise my work more and carefully because I make very simple mistakes easily and I wont notice it until I start to revise my work more.

My early assumptions about myself when it comes to writing that I know I won’t do well on it because I’m not the type of person to have a lot of thoughts in my mind whenever it comes to writing, and my mind seems to be empty whenever I start writing something like a essay. So I’ve been having a difficult time writing throughout my whole school year. When it comes to revising work I will need someone else to revise my work for me in order for me to catch my errors and mistake and remind me to avoid making the same mistake. My experience of revising was that every time  I revise my work after I finish an assignment , I always seems to find grammar mistakes and wrong sentence structure. Because I always write the way that my brain is telling me to write and seems to put everything down on the paper of what my brain is telling me and fix it after I revise myself. The most common error and mistake are grammar , sentence structure and knowing how to use proper punctuation. Because I always forget to put a comma or period whenever I am writing my paper. Also not knowing how to separate the lower case and upper case letter when I am in the middle of writing. The feedback that I receive from Professor Cole and my Colleagues was the same exact detail that I point out to myself because I probably wouldn’t have notice them myself.

Getting to class on time and submitting assignments in on time is definitely the biggest challenge for me in this course. Because as a full time student, I am also working two part time jobs at the same time to balance my daily expense out. And I find it to be very difficult to maintain a healthy lifestyle with so much things on top of my head. Even though I tried to change my schedule up a bit and try to make things change around a little to make it easier for me to handle, it just wont happen. And another challenging thing to handle throughout this course was trying to improve my reading and writing skills because I am struggling to write college levels paper. But I couldn’t write them because of my lack of grammar and wrong sentence structure,

As a reader, every time I read something I will always seem to visualize the voice of the author and what the author is trying to tell us. Or the tone of the article or book I’m reading. But since I’m not big fan of reading, I always space out whenever I’m reading and end up forgetting what I just read, which is a big issue for me.

As a writer, I have trouble staying on topic whenever I’m writing something long like a essay.  Because my mind keep thinking that I need to get the words In and it jumps topic whenever I’m trying to stay on task which is another issues I’m having whenever I’m writing.

As a scholar, I have a huge issues on procrastinating assignments and getting to class on time. I kept trying to get these bad habits fixed but everything just gets so out of place whenever I’m trying to fix them and it will bounce back to how it used to be.