Final Reflection and Portfolio

Christopher Gonzalez

Professor Jody Rosen

ENG 1121

23 May 2023

Final Reflection and Portfolio

            Over the course of the semester, I learned that when I speak about something I am invested in, the words have to come from somewhere; whether that’s my personal experience, from the heart, or from my wishes of how I want something to be.  I have a lot of thoughts I want to say out loud, and I am sincere when I am saying them.  Each time I was in class, I was very aware of how much I was speaking; I was always adding my words to the conversation because I felt that I had some really good ideas I wanted to say, I am a passionate person who loves to chat about things that interest me and it’s great for brainstorming about my writing.  Constantly speaking, deliberating, thinking about what I have said, and overall, just having a voice really allowed me to decompress in a very productive manner in class.  I was very comfortable in English class and it allowed a better side of me to flourish in an otherwise mundane-feeling lifestyle routine. 

In relation to what I wrote in Project 1 when I wrote, “I grew up a very shy and timid young boy who had no social skills or talents to speak of.  I lived a very sheltered lifestyle growing up because of some overbearing helicopter parents who micromanaged most aspects of my life and never really let me experiment with anything that was outside of what they knew or understood about the world around them,” it really resonated with me how different that all felt when I was able to let go of some of these things as I conversed about things in class that really interested me.  I want to better myself as a writer and a student as I gain more abilities in the field of debating and conversing about a myriad of topics.

As a writer, I have changed in my fashion of thinking on topics that I usually take a one-sided stance on.  By that, I mean that when I have to debate about something that I firmly believe in, I usually stick to that role, denying everything about the opposing side. But recently, I’ve learned to take a step back, and analyze the information I am presented with from both angles.  I learned that while being firm on my side of the debate on something is admirable, gaining tunnel vision isn’t.  Being inflexible on a subject matter leaves room for mistakes in my reasoning to happen, thus affecting the validity and quality of my writing.  I have to know what I am talking about from both perspectives of both sides of the argument that I am making.  In Project 2, when I wrote about the differences between trade schools and college, I had to make it a priority to understand the reasoning behind why either educational institution exists.  If I were to only take a stance on trade schools without firmly analyzing why college is also an option, then I would be doing a disservice to myself and look like a naïve writer.  After looking at sources and clearly verifying the differences between trade schools and colleges I came to the conclusion in my final draft, “Opposers to the idea of expansion for vocational schools in favor of colleges rely on the idea that colleges offer a wider range of learning that can allow a person a much larger skillset as a result of the broader, more flexible education that allows them to fare much better in the competitive job market because of their adaptable nature and ability to learn new things more easily.  However, with so many things outside of the control of a student (money, quality of the college), if the student ends up dropping out of college or never enrolling into one anyway, what purpose does college serve if it can’t get people through the door and have them stay there for the four years?”  It became a final statement that if college simply wasn’t in the cards for many people, credentials for something were still necessary.  Vocational schools exist because they provide an option for people to be competitive in the job market with.  At the end of the day, we all want good jobs, but you can’t get one without some modicum of skill in a field, so get a skill, by whatever means necessary.

In this class I learned about the perspectives of life from many different eyes; whether it was Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue,” Nella Larson’s “Passing,” or Greta Thunberg’s video opinion on climate change, all sources point towards people and their view towards how the world they live in reacts to them during their time.  Throughout everything, I always held myself to keep an open mind in order to absorb as much information as possible on every subject matter that was presented to me, that being racism, global warming, education, and a great many other humanitarian topics that we experience in our lives every day.  Never stop learning, grow my knowledge a little bit about everything I can get my hands on and it’ll serve me a purpose moving forward.  If I can better understand the experiences others went through with their years on this Earth, it stands to reason that I will also be able to deepen my knowledge on how to interact with others outside of circles I usually find myself in.

I revised my Project 3, the infographic that I created, and revised it within the same post.  The mistake that came about was no inclusion of the sources that I used for the infographic that I made, which I chose not to put onto the infographic itself just for the sake of making it look neat.  The project ended up becoming a very good compare and contrast about the pros of trade schools versus the cons of college presented in a very neat and organized manner.