Looking back on the beginning of the semester until now, I have found that I’ve improved overall as a writer. We were given different writing prompts for the blogs@Baruch, and 3 major projects. Through working on each assignment, I’ve learned things about research, the writing process, and the topics in general. I’m usually a creative writer, but this class made me realize immediately that I had work to do regarding research writing. I had so much to learn, from how I format my papers, to gaining more knowledge on topics I thought I knew. I go about tackling my writing tasks differently now than I did before. My classes this semester are all unrelated, but I will be able to utilize my skills from this class in my next semester of English.
The piece of work that I’ve done that stood out the most to me was my paper on the BPP and BLM movement. I enjoyed that process overall because we studied it from different angles, watched the movie, and brought it full circle to a modern day. Last semester at my previous school I took AA Literature so I started to scratch the surface of these topics, but we had so much to cover we didn’t get to go in depth. This was a perfect continuation for me. It’s more natural for me to get my flow going in creative writing than in research projects, but I truly enjoyed this one. One of the things that stood out to me was that there were so many influential women who were a part of this movement that got overlooked and the other was the media’s determination to make The BPP out to be a violent group and The BLM as a violent movement.
The most challenging and infuriating project was the Women in Red Projet. I am glad we got to learn about it because I had no idea there were such strong biases within wikipedia. The challenge was finding credible sources with information on my person, Martha Entenmann. Knowing that we can attempt to tell the stories of these very influential women, and that some idiot in the world can deem it “inaccurate”, and just wipe their name off the search engine is absurd. I really hope that we see a true attempt in improving how wikipedia treats women. They can write as many “Women In Red” articles and information, but it won’t make a difference until they start making the changes within themselves. I will say this project pushed me to look outside of the normal sources and I think it made me a better researcher over all. I enjoyed this class very much and I look forward to continuing to develop the skills I began here.