Rafael Frontany
22/12/24
Professor Charles
ENG 1121
Unit 1-Portrait Of A Word Essay
Construction Club(CMCE)
The ASCE(American society of civil engineers) club is a construction club at city tech. There are two clubs in the CMCE(Construction Management/Civil Engineering department. ASCE and the sister club CMAA(Construction Management Association of America). Both clubs are pretty much the same as they both fall under the umbrella of CMCE. The ASCE is a club where we meet on some Thursdays and are introduced to career and networking opportunities. Students who are majoring in construction management/engineering are predominantly the population at the club while students outside the field of study are also welcome to join. The club government are CMCE students who either have some degree of experience or are finishing their major within the next year or two. They also have decent connections via linkedin. Connections such as alumni who are very successful in their career. This club is essentially the gateway to opportunities and events that can propel students closer to their careers. We meet up on Thursdays to discuss career opportunities, network opportunities, etc. Students are welcomed(depending on their status in their degree completion) to sign up for events, job opportunities, internships,etc. The information regarding these details are usually presented by the club leaders but have also been presented by professors from the department and special guests who have a career in this field.
One event in particular is an annual dinner which I attended for the first time last May. The dinner is where students, alumni, industry workers, etc meet one evening and provide insight on our futures in construction. Alumnis would share some advice and their experience as former CMCE students at City Tech who now have a wildly successful career. Iāve been to one dinner so far which was my first time. It was an incredibly enriching experience. There were over 70 of us current students and each guest gave a speech on their journey. A lot of the speakers referenced how important not just the content but asking questions and making connections are. Especially given these professors have some sort of background with construction. After everyone spoke, we all had the opportunity to ask questions to everyone who spoke. I met this one man from the midwest whoās a landscaper. While not an alumni, he does have connections with many of the alumni. He decoded all of the credentials and certifications anyone would need. He has over 30 years of experience so he’s very well rounded in the field. We also connected with everyone who spoke on linkedin.
On Thursdays when we meet, the student government usually presents us opportunities at times accompanied by guest speakers, on career opportunities. In my experience, we’ve had professors from here at City Tech, professors from other colleges, industry workers, etc. Their experiences have ranged from load testing, landscaping, sustainability consulting, and construction management. One guest speaker I found fascinating was a professor at Nassau Community College who has his masters from West Virginia State University and has experience in steel bridge design. He lectured us on the different types of bridges and how to apply what we’ve learned as CMCE students to designing them. This lecture was very influential in terms of what will be the next event Iāll take part in.
Therefore I signed up as the event will be next spring. It’s a steel bridge competition. I will join a team where we will take on other teams from other CUNYs and SUNYs. There are different roles within the team which means anyone can join no matter what theyāre background is. Weāre all striving to build the most effective bridges. Most effective meaning design, safety, strength, etc. Each team has to complete the bridge in a timely manner. There are four different roles within every team. My role will be designing the bridge, which means I will decide the length, size, and appearance of it. The outcome of participating in this event is providing students real world experience in structural engineering, technical skills, as well as acquiring interpersonal skills.
Some students from this club have shared their own experiences. For instance last summer two members from the club were selected for an ASCE Students Days competition in california. ASCE Students Days is a competition where students are split up into teams and design a construction project and present them to industry professionals. There were 49 students selected from all across North America to join. They were put in teams and had to showcase their knowledge of construction. One of the students from my college and his team won. They placed first in the Best Construction Proposal and Closest Construction Estimate Category. This was a big deal since not only he won representing city tech but also considering this student is just one year ahead of me, this is what inspired me the most. This goes to show that anyone is capable of achieving something no matter how far someone is in their degree.
This club has been around for years however i joined in the beginning of the spring semester during my freshman year. I had already heard about the club through instagram before the semester started. However, it was one day during the first week of that semester where the president of the club came in and invited us to the club via a Discord and WhatsApp server. The two servers are where we typically communicate with each other on a daily basis. Itās usually questions one would ask that someone else or multiple people know the answer to whether it be about the classes, professors, resources, or about events. Thereās always at least someone who has the answer to a question about anything in the department. When it comes down to events or whenever we meet there are always announcements usually by the clubsā student government.
The first time stepping foot into the club in person felt as if this had been missing from me during my first semester. I wasnāt introduced to opportunities until the second semester. I knew I wanted to major in construction engineering, however didn’t know much about the career paths to come out of it. This club has provided me with strong insight not only about careers but also what to expect later in the degree. I came across some familiar faces from classes from my first semester and students who came into one of my classes whenever we had workshops. Therefore I got along with some people by default. The people I didn’t recognize took me in. Over the following months Iāve become closer and closer to not just them but my major which is Construction Engineering. What gets me the most about the club is how we all come from the same department of majors. We are all CMCE students who are club members and will end up with similar futures in terms of careers for the most part. CMCE is embedded within us since this is who we are and this is what we want out of our futures.
Unit 2-Feaure Article
What impact does the use of smartphones have on the social development of children?
As a young person living in the midst of the internet world and the midst of smartphones, I am taking note of the outcome of smartphone usage by children and what it means for their social development.
Rafael FrontanyĀ
10/31/2024
My parents shared the viewpoint that smartphones arenāt necessary for 10 year olds and healthy for childhood development. My father is a trainer and one of his clients is someone whoās very close to us and is a child psychologist. He has had discussions with me about the impact of device usage at my crucial ages of 10-13 and for all I know my father as well. Especially my mother since she taught 8th graders at the time. I didnāt have a smartphone until I was 13 knowing I was one of the last people in my class to have one.
Smartphones have been one of if not the most monumental devices of the 21st century. The first smartphone came out in 2007. It serves as a means of communication, entertainment, and has really become, as society puts it, a necessity. However society has taken the word ānecessityā to this extreme where it’s common to find a child as young as the age of 5 carrying a smartphone. This calls into question how this will affect this childās social development on top of the social development of anyone younger than 13. Itās also common for children to be on a smartphone for about 12 hours per day. Smartphones are a very new phenomena in the grander scheme of time.
While smartphones might be new however, the internet in general has been around forThereās a very stark social difference between children who grew up in the 2010s present and children from the last hundreds of thousands of years prior. For hundreds of thousands of years, civilization including children relied on the outside world to comfort their social needs. Whether itās playing outside with friends, going on adventures, or simply embracing nature. Nowadays childhood is more likely to happen behind a screen. This isnāt healthy for not just social development, but also cognitive and physical development.
Regina Guthold, Phd, approximates that, āamong 1.6 million 11- to 17-year-olds from 146 countries, 77.6% of boys and 84.7% of girls were insufficiently activeā. This is alarming evidence considering these numbers indicate the majority of a selected sample of over a million children live their lives indoors with devices. What’s important to consider is the gender difference.
| Social media frequency | 13.2 (27) | ||||
| Daily | 80.2 (69) | 40.0 (22) | 78.1 (25) | 100.0 (4) | |
| Weekly | 19.8 (17) | 60.0 (33) | 21.9 (7) | 0.0 (0) | |
According to the stats, females are more likely to spend time on social media. Seemingly, this is part of what accounts for the 85% of girls in contrast to the 78% of boys.
With smartphone usage comes social media. Social media is an umbrella term for different outlets such as Instagram, tiktok, facebook, twitter(now known as X), and even youtube. All of which serve different purposes. All of which can be used for entertainment, communication, news gathering, clout, etc. It is the most used app on a smartphone which speaks volumes on the effect social media has on social development. M Salehan and A Negahban support the idea of how āExtensive use of technology can lead to addictionā. Part of what stems from social media is the decline of mental health. Insecurity is a normal part of human nature. An insecure child could look at an instagram post and feel inferior afterwards to then start comparing their life to that of whatever instagram user.
Nowadays, boredom is less common among young people given we have phones to entertain us through. Boredom can also be common even on the device. Sherry Turkle suggests that āActually allowing yourself a moment of boredom is crucial to human interaction and itās crucial to your brain as well. When youāre bored, your brain isnāt bored at allāitās replenishing itself, and it needs that down timeā. For hundreds of thousands of years prior human beings might have been limited in terms of devices or technology(compared to now), however their neural activity was limitless.
Boredom plays an important role in neural development. However with excessive smartphone usage by younger children, their brains are not developing. Rather their brains are blindly focused on a screen. Puberty is an important milestone in childhood development which is not just restricted to their physical development. It is essentially a developmental period between childhood and adulthood. The brain is working with the rest of the body as it’s developing. However, with smartphone usage taking place at such a young age, brain development during puberty may be more stagnant.
Attention span is an area that has been largely affected by the usage of smartphones. Smartphone use is not only an addiction but could also be a form of OCD or even be habitual. With the amount of amusement someone could derive out of it, the smartphone can be a form of disruption. A task could be in the process of completion and one might have the urge to pick up the phone. This could also happen publicly such as a scholastic setting. Whether notifications are on or off, certain thoughts could be one’s impetus to pull out the phone. And as it happens, one would then fall into the trap and their means of focus will be the smartphone as opposed to their original task.
Tiktok, reels, youtube shorts, etc are notoriously known for their short time spans. The average tiktok for instance is about 15-30 seconds.
Smartphones have played a crucial role in shaping developmental as well behavioral patterns in younger generations. Children nowadays may experience less boredom and can grasp a sense of the internet world from a young age, however staring at a screen for an extensive period of time can have long term social and mental consequences.
Unit 3-Genre-Authors Statement(Newspaper in different file)
My mother is a high school English teacher and administrator. She has taught high school English for over 20 years. As discussed in the feature article and newspaper, the first smartphone came out in 2007 and how the proceeding years were highly transitional for childhood norms. Over the last few years sheās noticed major differences with the degree of diligence and behavior. Just like most other schools, the students are on their phones and my mother being an administrator has to also interfere with hallway duties. The students can be very disrespectful and immature. Multiple incidents have happened as well. Thereās drastic differences between her students from 5 years ago as opposed to her students over the last 2 years. She notes how they donāt take initiative or have drive. This is what makes me consider the differences between each set of students and why they behave the way they do. Iām also very close to one of my fatherās clients who to me is a non biological uncle. He tells stories of his childhood and I grasp how different his childhood from over 50 years was to my own. My genre was a newspaper article. This is a genre setting where I feel like I could express myself the most efficiently in front of an audience. The audience are younger parents and children to an extent. This is to raise awareness on how far weāve come in technology to the point where itās affecting our childrenās well being.
Coming up with the name of the title āA generation behind a screenā, as well as posting an image that reflects that premise was easy. Some of what I expressed throughout the newspaper were paraphrases from the feature article. Given that I did a feature article on this, by default I had background knowledge even if I was writing something new. After expressing these ideas, I then organized them into different sections as opposed to one full essay to present it as a newspaper. Then I displayed images that reflected certain sections. For instance there was a section about the comparison between todayās children against that of older generations. The image was a group of young children playing outside from the 1980s. The hardest part was adjusting to the website given that it was foreign to me. Pasting text box after textbox did become frustrating where I then had to resize them or change the fonts. There was one point where I got stuck trying to organize the different textboxes in order to paste everything exactly where I wanted them.
While I donāt see myself as an author, I do think I was able to say everything that needed to be said and organized it in a coherent manner. Iām very satisfied with the images I chose because I feel like theyāre exactly what Iām writing about in an image. Resizing the images was frustrating since I had to make them as small as possible and move them around the page just to put them where they belonged on the newspaper. On top of that I needed to make sure the full image was exposed, so the reader can really grasp the concept of what I wrote about. If I could do anything to improve the piece it would be making it more vibrant. Although newspapers are usually one-dimensional in color, I feel like mine couldāve been more than a blank sheet for the most part. The genre would be shared in elementary schools for the parents. That is when children are in the midst of their childhood.
Reflection Essay
There were three articles we were given throughout the first few weeks of class. The small assignments weāve done were āWhats my nameā, āHow to read like a writerā, and āFukuā. All of which had sets of questions and then we would respond to a prompt. The questions were used to help answer the prompt and even use examples from them. Similar to the previous english class, we started off with small writing assignments then later on did research assignments/projects. We also would work in groups to discuss the articles, questions, and provide further insight to each other about what our interpretation is. On top of this we had an essay we needed to work on. We were to write about our community and how we fit in to it. Whether it has to do with demographics, extracurricular activities, or even in a closed setting like our household. The actual assignment was presented to us on our first class. However, we started going over it during the last week or so of september. And from there on, the workload started getting more tense. This affected me since I tend to procrastinate a lot. It was easy to procrastinate on the early assignments however, it became more of a challenge since I had to start earlier.. My essay was about the CMAA/ASCE club that Iām in at City Tech. The next thing we had to do was a feature article. We had to choose a topic and make an article about it based on research. My topic was the effect of smartphone usage on the childās social development. This assignment was probably the most time-consuming out of the three major writings. The final assignment was the genre which was a carryover from the feature article. We were to choose a genre paired with an audience/audiences out of a given list and whatever we chose, we had to stay true to our topic and base it from our feature article. I conducted a newspaper on the impact smartphones have on the social development of children. In addition to that, we had an author’s statement where we addressed our topics and the process of creating our newspapers. The author’s statement was my first sign of relief in the semester. That felt like the easiest assignment weāve done since the first slew of assignments. Finally we have the reflective essay. Me being a reflective person by default will come into play. In short, we started off easy then gradually got harder then felt like a revival at the end.
While being a highly reflective person, my favorite assignment however was actually the feature article. Yes, it was very time-consuming, however the topic I chose was very fascinating. I felt like I didnāt just conduct research for the assignment, but out of inquisitiveness. The research felt like an adventure. From the history of the smartphone, to the history of social media, the reason they exist, and all the different impacts these things have on children which the list goes on and on and on. There would be times where I would be researching for fun. Sometimes rereading articles because of how intriguing and fascinating they were. Given the smartphone is such a complex issue, I only chose one general impact for the assignment. However even then, it felt as if there was a lot to talk about because this subject had so many impacts and so many details that branch off each impact. Ironically enough, my least favorite assignment was the genre. Not because of the topic but one of my challenges I had to overcome was to not regurgitate what I already said in my feature article. It was a challenge trying to deliver my writing as if Iām speaking to an audience. My audience was children and parents. I made sure to address āchildrenā as āour childrenā. But this is definitely not something Iām used to doing. The website itself could be frustrating to use at times. In order to present it as a newspaper, I had to drag text squares onto other areas and include photos on it. Resizing the photos, as well as maintaining a certain font was a big challenge about this website.
While I donāt feel as if Iāve learned a lot in terms of English, I have learned a lot from certain articles and the research assignments. The Fuku article was fascinating. Though I already knew the history the atlantic slave trade, european colonization, as well as the history of the hispaniola, what i didnāt know was the term Fuku. I enjoyed learning the evolution of it from a curse to something deeply engraved in the caribbean. The topic I researched for my feature article and newspaper gave me a new outlook on the dangers of smartphones and what they could do to future generations. The history of it made me more curious about the childhoods of older generations. Climate change will have a long term impact on our environment but smartphones will have a long term impact on civilization. In terms of the actual assignments, Iāve learned a lot about how to manage my time more efficiently. The assignments in my other classes could be very time consuming, and I needed to prioritize time more than anything. Throughout the semester we gradually stopped having lectures and working in groups and started focusing more on completing these big assignments. That yielded more time for me to complete these assignments so that I didnāt have to worry about them later on.
Completing the feature article and newspaper one after the other were two examples of developing new styles. Iāve implemented and gained different styles throughout the semester, whether itās from a reflective stance, a professional and somewhat scientific/psychological stance, to a parental stance. The reflective part has always been a part of my writing. The challenge was writing for a parental/child audience. Especially on something thatās very psychological and complex. It took me time to figure out how to dumb down for a particular audience on something thatās not only complex but also a reference to what Iām trying to execute. I would say Iām more confident in jumping from one form of writing to another that still delivers the same message. The essential part of the feature article was learning what it is and how it differs from all forms of other articles. The article by Cory Booker was a starting point. We followed the blueprint of his intro in terms of how he delivered it. Another one of my struggles was coming up with a hook. It took a while for me to come up with something that would hook the reader like Cory Booker did. Me being more confident in that field makes me want to go back and change the intro.
I felt as if the best genre that could reflect my feature article would be a newspaper. The smartphone age is a very crucial time for a young child to be growing up in. This is an epidemic that should be presented as news since this will affect future civilizations if it doesnāt already affect our current children. There werenāt really any enhancements nor was it vibrant or anything. The primary focus of a newspaper is the article itself. Newspapers generally are dull in terms of color. What it did have was an advertisement in the beginning that reflected when it was published. Most online newspapers have this in common.
Coming into this class, Iād already gained experience with College English. I learned a lot about myself when I had English 1101 last semester. I already learned a lot about what my writing style is. This semester, I felt as if I carried my style over from last semester and implemented it in my writing assignments. In the beginning of the semester I had high confidence about what the outcome would be given I took English 1101. I’ve always seen myself as a highly reflective person and I do tend to express it in my writing. An example would be the first essay writing about the ASCE/CMCE club at City Tech. I reflected on my journey into the club, different events/meetings weāve had, and the friendships Iāve made as a result. What I gained in terms of writing abilities was how to write from a different lens as well as how to cater to a specific audience. Writing from not just a reflective but a psychological and accessible style of writing.
Revising assignments wasnāt as annoying as one who isnāt strong in English would deem it to be. However this was mostly due to the fact that the first drafts were me presenting my ideas. My goal wasnāt to be too coherent during the first drafts. Revising for me was more so the opportunity to connect my ideas together and coherently. The first essay which I wrote about my construction club, the draft was whatever came out of my head. I wasnāt focused on trying to make it stand out or put as much effort in it as possible. I was rather focused on presenting ideas so that later on I could tie them all together and deliver them in a coherent format. However, I do tend to rush in my writings which at times would lead to minor grammatical errors. It would be until after feedback from the professor that I would notice them.
While I never had my writings peer reviewed by other students, I sought advice from another student who was doing the same genre as me during our third major assignment. While I knew how a newspaper was supposed to be presented, I didnāt know how to put it together on the website. We used this website called Canva and it was annoying to maneuver around it. There was someone else in the class who gave me ideas on what should be on the cover page. There were two sections on the top of the front page which eventually became the title and an advertisement.
There were some challenges I had previously addressed. One particular challenge that was prevalent for me when we started doing these major assignments was trying to work on these assignments in class. I eventually ended up getting a lot done towards the end of the semester. Most of the newspaper was done in class. However, it was hard to get motivated to work on the essay and the feature articles in class due to the large gap I had in between classes and since I decided not to work this semester. The increasing workload in all my classes made me prioritize certain assignments at certain times depending on the due date.
Overall, this has been quite a semester for me in terms of the workload. This class specifically taught me how to prioritize time and to express myself in different forms of writing. Even though this class is very distant from what Iām majoring in, which is Construction Engineering. I am grateful that I took this class. There are certain things I grasped that I will utilize sooner or later in my field.
