Category Archives: Final Reflection

My body of work from this semester definitely was an interesting bunch. One assignment i’d say stands out to me though, is the work we did for Wikipedia, it stands out because of the fact that it was actually something that was very strenuous at times and the site itself often gave me a headache from just looking at its complexity but i got adjusted somewhat and got things i needed to get done in regards to the site. I have definitely made a few realizations of myself as a writer and a big one is that I just don’t think i’m as much of one as i thought i would be or already was, i guess there was this invisible line i had to reach in the beginning of college to feel more like one but if i don’t feel comfortable in my writing now, will i ever? This class has definitely helped me in other subjects just from the insight alone, such as my political science class, every exam we must write an essay in the end and this class, for me personally, helped me with that area of expertise and the articulation and formulation and ways to site, etc, it has helped a lot with other subjects in general.

A piece of writing from Blogs@Baruch i’m proud of is the Ten Point Program. Even though it was a group sort of thing, i really like it because of the fact that for this project there were so many different ideas and proposals and it ranged from small to drastic changes and i found that enjoyable because it showed that even though a lot of people don’t usually speak a lot in the class, they have activist intention or at least showed that they can be for the people.

One piece of work that was particularly challenging for me was project 2, but the essay portion, i say it was challenging in the way of me just being able to allocate enough information to cover everything in the rubric while at the same time maintaining a well rounded thesis argument followed by coherent facts throughout the paper. I definitely gained some insane research ability from this though because that was one of the times i had to go up and down left and right under and over side to side for information on just ONE person, so i thank this piece of work for that because it for sure will be useful in the very near future.

The last 15 weeks of my semester I was able to learn and dive deep into several controversial topics of society. It was a major test to our critical thinking skills and helped us develop the bigger picture of said problems. Starting with the Black Panther Party, I had no idea the depth of information that these individuals had in history and writing about them only made me learn even more. Comparing it to modern day movements helped me see the bigger picture, how far we have come in history. When it came to assignments, they were pretty straightforward and just required some reading to understand what needed to be done. During our first project I was definitely still familiarizing myself with the college writing style which took some getting used to. After receiving my first grade I knew I could definitely do much better it just required more work ethic. Writing the second project I made sure to carefully structure it and follow the rubric, it paid off as I received a higher grade than before.

One piece of writing that I am proud of particularly is my second essay pertaining to the Women in Red on Wikipedia. I really enjoyed the whole Wikipedia log and browsing the site examining the small discrepancies here and there. Documenting my findings and using the research I put together writing the essay was much easier than before. This piece taught me how to develop a thesis that wasn’t too broad and incorporate it into my essay to help the readers understand the point that is trying to be made. Although I am proud of it, there are always improvements to be made and I don’t believe that this paper reflects my skills as a writer just yet. Trying to use some of my own techniques and some of my peers has allowed me to improve some things about my work like explaining the evidence better. I enjoyed the Wikipedia Journal and the writing piece i feel most proud of.

The biggest change is the topic and tone of the essay changes from focusing on narrative to a more research and academic tone, which is something I am struggling with for a long time. One piece of writing that was particularly challenging for me had to be the Project 1 on BPP and BLM. I found it difficult to draw the comparison between them and find strong pieces of evidence to support my argument. This essay was the roadblock to help me adapt to the writing style of English in college which is probably why I found it so difficult to begin with. In the end I enjoyed this semester even though the class was very early and I struggled to make it on time. The work was straightforward and helped improve my work ethic overall in the end. It was a good run and looking forward to future English classes.

In the last 15 weeks of this semester, I learned and wrote about many different topics regarding race and feminism. During the first week, I watched videos and learned about Critical Race Theory. I learned the background of Critical Race Theory and why it faces controversy. Through the videos and reading, I was able to form a firm understanding of the topic. I also learned about white privilege and its history in our society. Soon after, I learned about the Black Panther Party, an organization that I did not know much about before these past 15 weeks. This stuck out to me because I knew that the party existed, but I didn’t know exactly what they did or their motives. I then compared them to the Black Lives Matter movement, and how the ideas are roughly the same. This was all leading up to the first paper. After that, I learned a lot about Feminist Theory. I learned about what the theory stood for and the goals of the theory. While learning about the theory, I also made a Wikipedia account which was interesting to me because I haven’t used Wikipedia for educational purposes before, and we specifically learned about gender bias on the website. This was all leading up to the second paper, which was based on those topics. I then had to make a multimedia form based off of either one of those topics, which was for the third paper. I realized that I enjoy writing about topics that I am passionate about, which is all of the topics that we covered in the last 15 weeks. As someone that doesn’t particularly favor writing, I enjoyed writing about these things, and I will now remember this for my future classes. 

One piece of writing that I worked on during the last 15 weeks that I was proud of was my first paper. The paper was based on different things, ranging from the Black Panther Party, the Black Lives Matter movement and systematic racism. I was proud of this paper because I believe that I was able to elaborate my ideas on the topic very well, which is something I have been trying to work on. Not only this, but writing this paper made me realize that I am able to elaborate more on topics that I am very interested in because racism has always been a pretty big thing for me. Although I am proud of it, there are always improvements to be made and I don’t believe that this paper reflects my skills as a writer just yet. While writing this paper, I remember being able to write for long periods of time with no break because I was passionate about the topic. 

One piece that was challenging for me was the second paper. This paper was based on many different things such as Feminist Theory, Critical Race Theory, and my Woman in Red. The problem with writing this paper was having to piece everything together so the information makes sense. I had to decide which topic to talk about first because each topic flowed into the next in a way. It was also my longest paper of the year, so it took me the longest time. I was able to meet those challenges by starting early and getting my ideas together before it was too late. After reading it, I noticed that toward the end of the paper I was getting a bit sloppy due to being burnt out. In the future, I will remember to keep writing when my brain is fresh and take breaks so my writing is at its best. 

Ethan Jusino 

Prof Perry 

Eng 2150 

Going into this semester I feel like I knew what to expect from this course, and to be honest I did get my expectations met that is for sure. When it came down to assignments I definitely did better towards the end of the semester compared to the beginning of the semester. It was just that my work ethic got better when there was more to actually do. During the Black Panther Party project I definitely underdid the work and I saw it when I compared it to the wikipedia project which is just crazy to think about due to the fact that I really enjoyed both projects. I put more effort into the second and third projects compared to the first and my grades reflect that. I got a lower grade on the first project and that sort of motivated me to do better for the last two projects. I did some different techniques and even broke the night a few times to finish the other projects.

I really enjoyed posting my 7 day wikipedia log because it was the most personal thing towards me as it was for everyone else. Seeing all the logs was really nice to look at because it was a unique experience. My peers offered me both their opinions and good critiques. I did enjoy looking at some of the comments that they gave me because I tried to use them in my own work. I did also enjoy giving them their own pieces of advice. Trying to use some of my own techniques and some of my peers has allowed me to improve some things about my work, like instead of going straight to the point I started making it more thorough and giving more details about certain things. 

Lastly , the most challenging assignment was also my favorite one which was the entire women in read project. It was a long process which is why it was the most difficult as well because having pretty much zero information on the internet. Then creating essays and a wikipedia article that ultimately got deleted. I can safely say I had a lot of fun doing this project, even though it pushed me to my limits at night because I wanted to do as much as possible instead of just waiting to do it at the last minute. I know in the future I will not wait more than a day after the assignment is given to start writing something on it.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NfsC0X4Sl0ip3MoTKFTDwCRX67ymfreoXcbkKzwtZXo/edit?usp=sharing

I learned a lot from this semester. Especially when we were doing research for the projects. Of the projects that we had done, two of them needed resources and citations in the essays. The process of finding resources made me remember my history class from last semester, where we needed to analyze resources and choose the best one for the writing assignment. I got more exercise with researching and got more familiar with finding the best source. It can help me in future essays because I know where to find sources and which one is reliable. I also learned that we can find resources on Wikipedia’s citation page. It is fast to find related sources. The essays I wrote this semester were different from the ones I wrote last semester. But I got to explore different types of essays and learned their structures through writing. 

One of the works I am proud of is the Seven Day Log of Wikipedia. It is a process of learning a new thing and experiencing something I had not touched before. I had always known Wikipedia as an open editing page for everyone. But with the log, I made an account and recorded my activities with Wikipedia there. I am proud that I got to know the back end of Wikipedia. With the more I worked with Wikipedia, I got a better understanding of the problems of Wikipedia. There is gender bias shown in the pages but there are people who fight for a change. As for project 2, we were required to write a Wikipedia page for red-name women. Even if our work got deleted, I felt we did something significant and were a part of the revolution to fight for change.                                                                                                                                                                                                     

One project that I feel is the most challenging is Project 3, Creative Remix. I decided to do it in a group to create a podcast. I had never created a podcast before. Since it is a group project, there are a lot of different opinions from each other. The script that we wrote, we made a lot of changes. It was either one person who felt it was too dry or another person who felt it sounded weird. Also, many of the writings were too formal which is not a good fit when speaking out. And the script was just the beginning. The hard part was when we tried to record it. There are problems with tone, pronunciation, stumble, and volume. We couldn’t record the whole podcast in one try. We need to separate it into five sections and piece it together in the end. But it was a good prior experience if I had to do another podcast for a project next time.