Selena McIntosh – ENG1101 OL22 Composition 1

3.3.2021 Essay Draft Eng1101

Home is anywhere your heart is, I know it is a cliché but its true and because it is true, I think it is safe to say your intellectual home is anywhere your brain is, where you are most cognitively comfortable. My intellectual home is anywhere I could hear myself think, where its quiet, it could be anywhere really, silence is my intellectual home.

Salvatore Scibona and Bilal Rahmani both found their intellectual homes in institutions. In “Where I learned to Read” by Salvatore Scibona, he talks about how dull he was before he found his intellectual home, he was not a very good student but he loved to read and that helped him to find it similarly, in “Chronicles of a Once Pessimistic College Freshman” by Bilal Rahmani, Rahmani wasn’t always the model student, he did enough and when he became a freshman and experienced the uneventful side of being a college student he had lost hope and school became a chore until he found his intellectual home in English class. Unlike Scibona and Rahmani my intellectual home is not fixed but similarly to them I found it in an institution. I found that I am more focused and do way better in a quiet classroom than a noisy one, I dislike noise, but I love the quiet, so any quiet, tranquil place is my intellectual home.

About a year or so ago, I was a college now student. I have always been horrible at managing time and a top tier procrastinator something I am working on even right now but back then I had an exam one Saturday morning that I did not study for. I tried studying on the train on my way there it was too noisy, I came in the building and tried studying in the hallway other students voices would get in the way so I went to the library. Best decision ever. It was quiet and it had these separating cubicle rows that made it even better and in that 15 minutes I was my most intellectual self, I passed my law exam, properly. Like Scibona and Rahmani, I am not always a model student but knowing what my intellectual home is aids in my quest for greatness.

Considering how everything is going, I would have to revise my intellectual home to guarantee success. There is a pandemic happening, most of the time I am home, there is no library I could go to all the time or quiet classrooms at school anymore. In order to get the most out of City Tech, my classroom is at home, so I must make home my intellectual home.

I have had many learning experiences in the past 5 years but the one that stands out to me the most is quite recent. In my senior year in high school I took a trigonometry class, I have always admired the intricacy of math but never dared to engaged with it and deal with it head on unless I absolutely had to. English and the other subjects acted as my crutches all the time that I fell short in math. I knew my position with math but I needed those credits so, I absolutely had to take the class.

I think it was fate. I had to have that learning experience and It might have been my teacher, my need or both but it was a revelation. I had learned more math in a class than I had learned in a semester and I was so proud of myself because I never knew I had it in me. I was now good at mathematics and like magic I fell in love with it. My teacher was amazing and played a big role in helping me find my love for math. At times when I was confused, he taught with such understanding that the knots in my brain would unravel and in an instant I’d get it. I chose to talk about this learning experience because it has impacted me the most. My passion for mathematics aided in my career planning and it is now a big part of my college experience. Although I had to take the class and was not really enthusiastic about the idea at first, I am glad I took it. I learned so much in such a short time and got to experience first hand the beauty of mathematics while having fun in the process.

The OpenLab at City Tech:A place to learn, work, and share

The OpenLab is an open-source, digital platform designed to support teaching and learning at City Tech (New York City College of Technology), and to promote student and faculty engagement in the intellectual and social life of the college community.