UNIT 1
I didn’t edit this one much. I edited the wording and conventions a little it to help the story flow a bit better, but other than that I left the majority of the essay as is.
Everyone needs help when they’re at their lowest point in life, right? I was once at this point as well. When you’re a student, it’s hard not to compare yourself to others. You begin to minimize your successes and put yourself down for every small thing you’re unable to accomplish. I struggled with this for the longest time as well. However, at a certain point, I came to a realization that everyone moves at their own pace and even if you move at a slower pace than others, it’s completely fine! I never really took this concept to heart, until my friends and family helped me realize this. They reminded me that as long as you reach your goals, it doesn’t matter how long you take to achieve them. I’m thankful for my support system who still supported me when I was struggling with school, put me back on the right track and helped me achieve and follow my goals.
I remember being very anxious but excited on the first day of my college experience. I attended Stony Brook University and commuted to campus through the LIRR. It was a daily two hour struggle commuting to Stony Brook and I honestly hated it. On top of this, as the semester went by my classes became increasingly more difficult and my grades reflected my performances in these classes. My grades were at their all time lows and I was pretty shaken up by them. However, instead of my low grades boosting my morale and pushing me to want to do better, I began to lose motivation for school and do even worse in all my classes. Not only was this lack of motivation hurting my performance in my studies, but it also took a negative hit in my interactions with my friends and family as well.
It was my family that first noticed that I had begun to grow more distant towards them. They took the initiative and reached out to ask if anything was wrong. I explained everything to them. I told them that my academics were bringing me down and that I was struggling in general. I lost sight of my original goals and ambitions. To my surprise, they were all very supportive and reassured me that it’s okay to struggle and that if I needed to take a break to restructure myself, that I would be allowed to. I’m so grateful for my parents for being so supportive and understanding of my struggles back then. This talk I had with my parents was the turning point of my college career. After I finished my sophomore year, I took a gap year to try to refresh my mind, and thankfully, the break I took helped immensely. During the break, I asked many people around me for advice, which they graciously provided. My friends reminded me that everyone is in school for different reasons and is attending for different goals. Everyone also achieves said goal at their own different pace and that it’s okay to take it easy and slow. I was told not to compare myself to others and that I’m writing my own story for my future. Through all the helpful words of encouragement, I began to see myself as less of a failure, but rather more of someone who was just lost and just needed a little push in the right direction. Without all this advice and encouragement from my family and friends, I would probably not be the same student I am today.
During my break, I took some time to look up different majors I could swap into and I decided to choose dental hygiene. All my friends and family that knew my situation said that they were extremely proud of me for finding a path that I’m interested in and committing to it. I always knew I had wanted to do something related to the sciencey-anatomy field and when a friend of mine mentioned that he had a sister working in that field, I knew it was the path I wanted to go follow. He gave me a bunch of resources to help me get basic information about the field and told me bits and pieces of the ins and the outs of the job. His help, along with the motivation instilled in me by watching my other friends being passionate about their fields of studies, pushed me to get back on my feet motivated and ready to have a fresh start with my transfer to City Tech. However, with my classes being online, it was slightly difficult to keep my spark of motivation since it was so easy to get disconnected from your studies, as everything was remote learning. But to counter this, my friends and I set up online study sessions with each other to keep each other focused and on top of all our studies. My friends played such an important role in helping me refocus on my studies and get back on the right track.
Through my friends and family, I was able to get back on the right path when I was down, and not lose sight of my goals once I got back on this path. Without my support system, I wouldn’t be where I am today and I am forever grateful for all my friends and family who helped push me to be a student I’m proud to have become. I’ve once again found my passion for school and finally have a goal to reach out and seek for, and I know that if I ever lose this spark again, I know that I’ll have the means to get back on track.
UNIT 2
Along with the basic edits, such as conventions, wording and punctuation, I tried to incorporate the “quotables” within the essay themselves rather than just putting them at the end of each section. By putting these quotables in the essay, I could provide my paragraph with more content, such as to paint a more compelling point or a introduce a thought provoking idea, to help provide a bit more depth within my arguments.
Introduction:
Playing video games is a past-time I’ve grown up with. Ever since I was little, I’ve enjoyed playing video games – whether it be playing Battlefront with my brother on the original Xbox or playing League of Legends with my friends on the computer. It’s something that allows me to just relax and relieve stress while having fun. Recently, I’ve been playing a new game called Valorant, which is a first-person shooter game. In this game, an important aspect of gameplay is not only shooting, but also communication with your team – and players communicate to each other by talking to each other through voice comms. This is where the problem comes in. There have been games in which as soon as I speak one word, sexist remarks come flying in. The game could be going along normally, but as soon as I make a mistake, it’s all my fault, because girls suck at playing games and that I’m bringing the team down. And the alternative is that if I’m playing well, that I have someone else playing for me or that I’m hacking, because girls can’t be good at video games. Sadly, these types of interactions are not isolated interactions and occur very frequently to the female player base while playing video games. These interactions make me question why this behavior is normalized in the community and why it occurs in the first place. Especially in the world today, where gaming has a large, mainstream community, with phone games and computer games being more normalized and genders and people of all ages are playing video games – shouldn’t people be more open-minded while playing? What causes this mental-block that makes people believe that only a specific gender is allowed to play games? I want to see if there are any ways to help cut down the frequency of these negative interactions and create a more open, accepting community for all gamers.
Source 1:
“The Sexist Problem of Overwatch & Gaming.” Youtube, Uploaded by SVB, 1 Jan, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0ZSBfLziE8.
This Youtube video is a great video that gives a rundown of what female gamers go through while playing video games. It starts off by mentioning general toxicity in the gaming community, then goes into detail by specifically talking about the kinds of toxicity that is specialized to females. It shows clips of people leaving remarks such as asking the girl for their snapchat, myspace, and such and when no response is given by the girl, they get offended stating that saying that they’re just portraying typical woman behavior. He also talks about the topic mentioned earlier in the introduction, talking about how everyone games in our current times and how the gaming community still can’t adjust to the new demographics of the newly-much-more-diverse player base. He then goes into detail about the types of sexist remarks, talking about the most common ones, such as telling them to go back to the kitchen, to other more deep-rooted comments such as saying that they’re not even going to try because they have a girl on an important position of the team. He stated at one point that “Very frequently just the sound of a female voice or the thought that a girl might be on the team seems to ignite some primal sense of stupidity in almost a large section of the male player base.”, which further highlights the childish nature of these remarks and how baseless these comments are. He then brings up a study that illustrates that men genetically don’t even have an inherent advantage in playing video games. If this is true, why do these sexist attitudes exist? He also mentions that it’s not only females that run into these interactions, and that it also happens to males as well. Males that have a higher pitched voice or talk more effeminately, are more likely to encounter harassment compared to other male gamers. This brings up the idea that the lack of masculinity in these players that’s what makes them a target of this abuse. These players associate gaming as a competitive, masculine type of activity and that anything that goes against these values of gaming culture is something to target. At the end of a video, the creator proposes an idea to try and help reduce the amount of sexism within this community.
I think that this video does a great job on running through the issues of the problem at hand. The fact that this genre is a video, allows people to actually hear and see actual footage of the remarks being made, which allows the viewers to better understand the situation at hand. By hearing the tone of voice these remarks were being made in and seeing how uncomfortable the recipient of these remarks were, shows how negative these interactions are for the victims. Also throughout the video, the author includes statistics and facts from published journals as well, to bulk up his credibility instead of just filling the video with anecdotal evidence. Pathos and ethos were used in order to develop his argument and at the end of the video he comes up with a plan to reduce the frequency of harassment to women gamers, which is to speak out when one sees this kind of stuff occurring and calls it the #SpeakUp movement.. By building up his argument and showing that his viewers that this is a big problem gamers are facing, could imbue a sense of responsibility in these viewers to want to create some sort of change and to join his #SpeakUp movement as well.
Quotable: “Very frequently just the sound of a female voice or the thought that a girl might be on the team seems to ignite some primal sense of stupidity in almost a large section of the male player base.“
Source 2:
Kowert, Rachel, Johannes Breuer, and Thorsten Quandt. 2017. “Women Are From FarmVille, Men Are From ViceCity.” New Perspectives on the Social Aspects of Digital Gaming 136–50.
How did these misogynistic sentiments develop in the gaming community in the first place? This paper provides us with an insight on why ideas came to be. The paper talks about how these ideas might be deep rooted from childhood. Growing up, video games are associated with an activity fitted more for boys. Males are more frequently found with gaming consoles than females and these consoles were associated with being “boy toys”. Female participation in activities related to video games while growing up caused them to be rejected by their peers which further pushed the narrative that gaming is a male-centric activity. These ideas deeply ingrained into these children while growing up might have influenced these sexist mindsets in these children at a young age. Another factor might be the female representation in video games themselves. Female representation in video games is very sparse, and in the rare chance of female representation, these women are suggestively dressed, or are just bystanders in the game. The women in these games just serve to be tools for the male characters. Issues such as this along with several other issues highlighted further within the article might contribute to this issue of sexism in the gaming culture.
This paper was pretty interesting to me as it highlighted some of the reasons on how this sexist culture could have came to be. The reasonings that the journal presented actually made sense as well. One of the main points that the author said that I found relatable was the point about the gender roles while growing up as a child. I can say that for me, my parents tried enforcing these ideas on me as well. They hated the idea of me playing games but wasn’t against the idea of my brother playing the same video games. I feel like if it applied to my household, the same would apply to other households as well. There was one line in the journal that stated, “Taken together, these results suggest that some male players may view female players as a threat to their social identity and, therefore, attempt to demonstrate their superiority and defend what they to be consider “their” domain by insulting and harassing female players,” which is a point that I also think is true. To give a personal anecdote, while playing Valorant, there were multiple times when I would perform better than the players on the team, and that would cause more rude remarks than usual to be tossed at my way. In order to defend themselves of their poor performance in the game, they tried to boost their egos by trying to put me “back in my place” to feel better about themselves.
I feel like this is an appropriate genre to educate readers about this topic. Since this is a research journal, it allows the readers to take in the facts without any questioning about the validity of the information presented. This allows for readers to establish an idea on why sexism in the gaming world exists, and although correlation does not necessarily equal causation, it can give way to provide an explanation on why something occurs.
Quotable: “Taken together, these results suggest that some male players may view female players as a threat to their social identity and, therefore, attempt to demonstrate their superiority and defend what they to be consider “their” domain by insulting and harassing female players,”
Source 3:
D’Anastasio, Cecilia. 2018. “Inside The Culture Of Sexism At Riot Games.” Kotaku. Retrieved April 11, 2021 (https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483).
Some might argue that these interactions only occur in the virtual space because interactions are anonymous and there are no repercussions to these actions, however this article states that this isn’t the case either. This article talks about sexism within one of the worlds biggest gaming companies, Riot Games. Although the company states that they have a zero tolerance policy on discrimination, harassment, and general toxicity, the claims given in the article show actions that were much different from what the company claimed their motto to be. The article details first hand experiences of these women experiencing sexism and vulgar actions by their coworkers, and even the higher-ups of the company. Criticisms given to female employees, never given to male employees, included things such as calling them annoying, too ambitious, or too loud. Multiple accounts of these experiences that employees have faced while working for Riot paint the image of blatant sexism that runs rampant within this company.
I honestly find it upsetting that even though in our society today, which I believe is the most open-minded our society has been since a long time, that problems like this are still prevalent within our workforce. Feeling safe and accepted in a workplace is one of the most important factors for me when working somewhere. The fact that factors such as your gender, rather than factors such as your accomplishments, can be the basis of how you’re treated in a workplace upsets me a lot. Within the article, the author also brings up the idea of meritocracy, which is the idea that people who work hard will eventually get rewarded for their hard work and rise through the ranks and is usually a big notion in tech companies. However, based on the stories these women have told, this idea doesn’t hold true and the author further supports this by providing statistic proving that only a very small population of women hold a leadership position in these companies which further highlights the discrimination faced by women in not only the Riot Games company, but in other big tech companies as well. The article also mentions that there actually is a branch within the company that deals with diversity and inclusion initiatives led by a woman named Soha El-Sabaawi. But seeing as the company still remains and keeps its sexist attitudes, which makes me wonder if the company even enforces El-Sabaawi’s initiatives in trying to create a more inclusive environment, which further shows the state of the misogyny within this company. To back up this ide, when asked about her influences within the company one worker replied, “In the end, you can disguise a pig with lipstick, but it’s still a pig, man”. This shows that although these workers can try to pretend that their mindsets have changed to try to respect women, their base thoughts and beliefs are still the same and can’t be changed, so trying to change them is futile and a wasted effort.
These first person accounts of these women experiencing sexism within their workplaces adds to the persuasiveness of the writing, just like the Youtube video in the first source. By adding their own personal experiences shows that not everyone goes through the same kind of discrimination, which highlights each woman’s story even more.
Quotable: “When I described El-Sabaawi’s and Kubushyna’s efforts to Rioters familiar with the company’s recruiting practices, one said, “In the end, you can disguise a pig with lipstick, but it’s still a pig, man.”
Conclusion:
As you hopefully see by now, women in the gaming community face sexism and misogyny, both in the online and offline space. Even though gaming is an activity that’s become a lot more mainstream than it once had been, the idea of women in the gaming space is still not accepted by many. While playing video games, it’s not a bizarre sight to see a female gamer get called out by teammates just solely due to their gender. These behaviors can be attributed to the fact that gender roles in childhood can play a factor in building this mindset. By engraining the idea that boys are more suited to play video games to individuals at a young age, it normalizes the idea that gaming is a male only past-time. As this idea becomes internalized, these behaviors will not only begin to show in video games, but also in real life as well.
I honestly was surprised when I found out that about 50% of gamers are female, because I also still believed gaming was predominantly a male-dominated culture. The fact that I also grew up assuming and believing that women were the minority group in gaming shows the mindset that I developed due to all the negative interactions that I’ve also experienced while growing up and while playing video games. Another fact that I found very alarming is the fact that these sentiments are not only expressed online, but offline as well, in spaces such as a work environment. It’s hard to take in that such behavior is normalized when so much of the world nowadays is focused on inclusivity of genders and races of all kinds. It’s important to educate ourselves on topics such as these to help prevent the spread of these ideas.
The people that need to hear this the most obviously are the people that act this way and act on these misogynistic beliefs. In an ideal world, if they knew the impact that their words had on these women, they would feel just a little bit of remorse and stop acting in these ways. However, I feel like this is very unlikely, as they already know the impact of their words on these women but have zero care. Which is why I believe that it’s more important for every gamer in general to be educated about this kind of behavior to help prevent the spread of this mentality and to help stop it when they see it occurring. Although female acceptance in the gaming community won’t happen overnight, baby steps can be made in the right direction by educating yourself and the peers around you to help build and create a more open-minded and accepting community for gamers.
References:
“The Sexist Problem of Overwatch & Gaming.” Youtube, Uploaded by SVB, 1 Jan, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0ZSBfLziE8.
Kowert, Rachel, Johannes Breuer, and Thorsten Quandt. 2017. “Women Are From FarmVille, Men Are From ViceCity.” New Perspectives on the Social Aspects of Digital Gaming 136–50.
D’Anastasio, Cecilia. 2018. “Inside The Culture Of Sexism At Riot Games.” Kotaku. Retrieved April 11, 2021 (https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483).
UNIT 3
Usually when someone sits down to write an essay for a school assignment, coming up with an interesting topic to talk about is probably one of the hardest things to do. The topic has to be something of interest to you, while having enough content to discuss, while also not boring the reader of the essay as well. I was thinking about what topic to choose, when I remembered an issue that’s been popping up a lot on my social media. On Twitter, I follow a bunch of female streamers who play this game called Valorant. Valorant’s a first-person-shooter game where players run around a map trying to shoot each other down — which isn’t really important. The important thing is that in the game, players within the same team communicate with each other through voice chat, as keeping track of locations of the enemy team is a very important aspect of the game. However, this is where the issues come up. In most games, players will use the voice chat productively to help the team out by calling out the locations of the enemy team, until a female player speaks up. As soon as players realize a female is in the same team as them, sexist remarks start flying in. Many of these female streamers have posted clips showing these misogynistic behaviors of these players in-game, and some of the things that have been said to them are just downright disgusting. Toxic comments are never warranted but toxic comments stemming just from the basis of one’s gender is even more rude and unnecessary. Along with these female players, I have also experienced these behaviors while playing Valorant as well. Playing video games should be an enjoyable activity for all parties involved; however, when I experience things like this, it makes me upset and embarrassed for playing the game.
By talking about this issue, I want other players to be aware of this problem that’s going on — which isn’t just the issue of toxicity in this specific game called Valorant. I want to talk about sexism and misogyny in the gaming community as a whole. These sexist beliefs not only just pop up within these multiplayer games; they exist in the real-life world as well. While researching the topic, I realized that these beliefs carry out in our workforces as well. A large, well-known gaming corporation called Riot Games has been outed multiple times for their sexist practices as well. I want to create a community that welcomes everyone and accepts all genders and the first step in creating change is bringing awareness.
To be honest, if you personally haven’t been a target of these behaviors, it’s hard to sympathize with these players and want to do something to create change. This is why I’ve decided on making a podcast to talk about this and hear the stories of these women that have been affected. In my opinion, hearing the stories from these individuals would have a much stronger impact on the audience rather than reading some text on a piece of paper. Listening, rather than reading the stories of these individuals allows the audience to get a better sense of the emotions and feelings that the person was experiencing during that time, which could allow the listeners to sympathize with them a bit more easily. Also, considering the topic audience, they’d probably much rather listen to a podcast than read an interview or a research paper on this topic. Listening to a podcast is something that can also be done wherever, such as while running errands or while driving, which fits the lifestyle of the young, gaming population as well.
Especially since podcasts can be found anywhere online, even in places such as Spotify nowadays, it could be seen by a large demographic of people all over the world. Even though all these considerations have been made to try to appeal to our target audience, these efforts probably won’t instantly change the attitudes of the people in the community, but it would be a step in the right direction for positive change.
At first the thought of a podcast sounded really fun — until I realized I had no idea on how to approach making the podcast. At first I tried to write a script, like it was some kind of play or movie or something but I thought that would make the conversation flow really “stiffly” so I decided against that idea. After I scrapped that idea, I started fresh and wrote down a bunch of questions for the hosts to ask for the guests. I didn’t really like that idea as well, so I just ended up sticking with a very rough outline of ideas and things that we could talk about as we conversed during the podcast. I liked that idea the best because it gave us at least some kind of structure and topics to talk about, while letting the thing be a lot more free-form and thought it would create more thought-provoking discussion.
The second big problem came up when I realized I had no idea how to lead the podcast and what the host did. Like I mentioned before, I really never watched podcasts before so I had no idea what hosts in podcasts do and how they led their podcasts. I’m also not much of a natural, talented speaker, so leading a talk show was definitely not something I would be particularly talented with. I was contemplating on deciding if I should just rewrite the script again, so I can have something to read off of and to talk without breaking the flow of the podcast, but I ultimately decided against that. This is where I got the idea to have my friend be the host and actually have me be one of the guests instead. This idea actually worked better, as in having females for the guests makes more sense than having guys, due to the context of my topic. It also helped a lot that my friend actually enjoys listening to podcasts regularly, so he knew the way a podcast should flow and knew how to guide it in a somewhat “professional” podcast way. Having me as the guest also allowed me to answer the questions a lot more detailed compared to what anything my friend might have said due to the fact that I was the one that did the research and was more educated on the topic compared to him.
If I could do the podcast all over again, I would definitely change a lot of things. The first big thing would be to educate myself and listen to a few podcasts before I started recording mine. This would have probably allowed me to structure the whole thing better and would have sold the whole recording as a more professional product. Another thing that I wish I could have changed was the open-structure of the outline of the things I wrote down to talk about. Since the outline I created for the podcast was so open-ended, we ended up rambling on about a lot of the stuff and ended up just talking too much about things. Because of this, the podcast ended up being a lot longer than I expected and we had to cut the podcast off abruptly at the end to make sure the listener doesn’t fall asleep listening to the never-ending podcast. Another thing was the technical difficulties I kept having while trying to talk on the show. My mic kept cutting out and left us with some awkward pauses while I was trying to work to get my mic to work. This could probably be solved by editing the pauses out and retrying that particular question or situation, but I lack the editing program and the skills to do that.
Out of the many things we did in the podcast, the thing that I really liked and thought was well incorporated was our little sponsorship ads. I felt that they helped the podcast feel a bit more realistic and helped breakup the podcast into sections. Another thing that I really liked was the dynamic of the entire party. It probably helped as the people that helped me make this were my close friends, but the easy-going dynamic and flow of the podcast probably helped in making the podcast a lot more enjoyable to listen to.
PODCAST LINK: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XHtZNeB8t0TtEXfhDbvd7QMNn5CASMxm/view?usp=sharing
FINAL REFLECTION
I’ll begin by saying — this semester flew by so fast. I’m sure there are multiple reasons as to why the semester went by so quickly. First reason being that it was my first semester back after taking a break and was also the first full semester that I was in Zoom University for. My decently light class-load this semester was probably the second reason for helping these past few months feel like less of a drag. This semester, I took two anatomy lab classes, a sociology class, and this english class. Out of these four classes, I enjoyed sociology and english the most, and out of those two — I probably enjoyed English more.
Prior to college, I disliked all my english and writing classes. Anytime anyone would ask what my least favorite subject was, english would be my go-to answer. But now, after taking this class, I can say proudly that my answer will not be english. I actually enjoyed writing in this class, for at least the last two assignments. Prior to this class, all my writing assignments were very structured and had a set of requirements or a rubric I had to follow to get the most points, and it killed any creativity in writing the assignments. However, the second assignment was mostly self-guided and gave us so much more freedom compared to any essay I’ve ever worked on. The freedom in the choice of the topic and content of the essay helped me build my interest in writing this assignment greatly.
As you can probably tell, the annotated bibliography was my favorite assignment to work on throughout this semester. Since I was able to choose a topic near and dear to my heart, the essay was very enjoyable to write. Also there were some bumps and troubles in the road while I was writing the essay, I’m overall very satisfied with the outcome and the content covered in the essay. My least favorite assignment that I worked on this semester was probably the educational narrative. I’ve always never really liked reflecting on myself and the fact that I had to write a piece reflecting back on myself, to no surprise, not very fun. It’s pretty hard for me to gather and remember details from a while ago due to my really short selective memory, and to add on, I also strongly dislike talking about myself. These two factors combined made the educational narrative my least favorite assignment I’ve worked on. Although I didn’t have much fun writing that compared to the annotated bibliography, I would like to say that I think it still did turn out pretty nicely in the end.
One of the main points that I took from this course was from an assignment from the near beginning of this semester. “Shitty First Drafts” by Lamott really helped guide and aid my writing process. As I stated previously in the assignment related to this piece, I never really thought of the first draft as an actual first draft. I was always worried about writing and creating something refined, even in the first draft stage. I would lay out my thoughts and I’d go back and edit the sentence that I just wrote, to try to refine what I just wrote. This process often broke my train of thought and it would break the flow of writing as well. However, in reading Lamott’s writing and writing the assignment, I realized “ … that the first draft is just what it is, a first draft and I should take advantage of it to just pour whatever ideas I have out. Whether these ideas make sense or not, I can take those ideas and refine them later to help create a solid final product in the end.” I think that’s the most important thing I took away from reading and doing that assignment. Since rarely anyone will see my first draft, I can just write down whatever thoughts pop up in my head first, and then refine the ideas later as I re-read and edit it. Editing the paper as I go through the paper a second time probably also helps with the overall flow of the essay as I’m reading it as a whole, rather going through it section by section as I write it.
Some other points that I’ve learned while reading and doing the homework assignments actually helped a lot for my sociology class. In that class we have three writing assignments — two major and one minor— which constitutes for the majority of our grade for that class. In the two major assignments, we have to choose three out of the ten major sociological themes and apply our readings and knowledge gained from our class to these themes. This is where the three main things I’ve learned from this class helped in writing these papers. The first one being the importance of the shitty first draft, the second being the importance of word choice, and the third is in approaching the paper from an outsider’s point of view.
Since the first point, the importance of the shitty first draft, was already covered earlier in this essay, I’ll skip to the next two points I’ve applied while writing for my sociology class. The second point, the importance of word choice, was also an important factor in writing these essays. In the paper, thoroughly explaining how my example related to the sociological theme was the core of my essay. While tying my example in with the theme, word choice was something I had to consider to most accurately portray my thoughts and connections about the example to the theme that I chose. As I wrote in the reflection about “How to Read like a Writer”, at the end, I stated, “So now, rather than just looking for fancy words to fill the page for my papers, I will carefully consider my word choices to fit the overall flow and ideas I would like to convey to my writings.” Word choice could heavily influence and change the meaning of the ideas that I want to connect and convey in the paper, and wrong word choice could either make these connections confusing for the reader, or just straight up create incorrect connections between these ideas. The last point I considered while writing my sociology papers is the importance of seeing the topic at hand from an outsiders point of view. While writing the annotated bibliography, I had a hard time coming up with what to write, since I had a basic foundation of the idea and had a general foundation on what to write on, but after those basic ideas I covered, I was stuck on what else to talk about. This is why I believe it’s important to approach these topics from an outsider’s view. I realized that in the micro-reflection that I wrote, that “If I approach it [the topic] as someone who has no idea about the topic, it allows me to have so many more angles to tackle the question from, which can allow for a more thorough investigation of the question.” And by approaching the sociological themes from an outsider’s point of view, I can probably give a more thorough rundown of these concepts and allows me to give a more detailed explanation and connection of everything rather than just glossing over everything assuming that the reader knows everything already.
By taking this class, I’ve actually learned a lot more than I’ve ever learned in my previous classes. I’ve already learned to take and apply the topics I’ve learned in this class to a class I’m taking concurrently, which I take as a very promising sign by me. I’m grateful for the points I’ve learned from taking this class, and I hope these points can help mold and change me into becoming a better, more effective writer.
