Category Archives: Final Reflection

From my own experience, the writing for this semester is completely different compared to the English T class from last semester. 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. Lack of confidence is one of my big problems in writing, I often worry about if I am structuring my essay correctly, such as if my evidence fits my argument, or how my general tone is presented to the audience. Professors often say that college essays had much more freedom compared to high school writing, in which students are asked to jump out from writing in the immobilized outline. The meaning of freedom in writing is different for people like me, it meant I’m more likely to lose my focus in writing. This semester is different, the professor explained the brought argument of the writing topic and left a big room for students to develop their own individualized arguments. I still lack confidence in writing, but the professor’s advice and recognition greatly encouraged me in writing. If you ask me what I learned this semester, I would say the importance of confidence in writing.

I was satisfied with the outcome of this semester. Especially for the last remix project where we are asked to recreate the previous two projects on Black Panther Party or Wikipedia gender bias into the medium piece. My group decided on the podcast as our medium to perform to audiences, which is something I have never tried before. The time we spent on learning new things is way more than the time we actually spent on doing our project. The challenge and the outcome were equivalent, the more we struggled on producing it, the more satisfaction we felt when we heard the professor appreciating our work. But even so, I still believe that there is a big room for improvement.

There are challenges throughout this semester, it’s hard for me to transaction from writing narrative essays to academic-based research essays. Especially when I have no prior knowledge of the research topic, such as the Wikipedia gender bias. The research process for gender bias issues and women in red on Wikipedia is where I struggled the most. My experience with Wikipedia before is only based on research, which means I had never opened the discussion section nor accessed any of Wikipedia’s functions other than simply looking at an individual Wikipedia page for a certain subject. Scamming through the discussion section is a new experience for me, it’s like understanding something completely new to me. It’s also hard for me to determine rather or not a page contains biased wording, I’m lack of understanding of how would a gender bias performed on a page. On the other hand, I realized that I am admitting to the fact that the bias problem is surely fixed before I found them subconsciously.

I really appreciate the encouragement and knowledge I learned this semester, Thank you a lot, Professor Perry!!!

This semester, there was a lot more writing than last semester, but it was enjoyable, I learned about new topics that I never heard about before. I liked learning about the Black Panthers Party and its relations with the Black Lives Matter Movement, it was a real eye-opening lesson, and watching the film Judas and the Black Messiah showed everything we read and talked about. Likewise, the Women In Red and Wikipedia project was also very enjoyable and interesting to learn. I never thought there was a good way to use Wikipedia. I always refrained from using it, but after learning about how it can be used correctly, I am not uncomfortable using the site. Even more, learning of this movement called Women In Red was also very shocking, I never thought there was an unequal ground for men and women on the site. I hope the 17% of women on the site can jump up to 45 or maybe 50%, it is very unfortunate that we live in a society where one gender is preferred over the other.

One of my favorite Blogs@Baruch posts/assignments we did was the About Us, Student Opinion. It was very enjoyable to read some of the posts my peers wrote, some were about what song best describes you, another one I read was about one’s favorite actor, and a memorable one is one’s secret to a happy life. All of these topics were enjoyable to read. I wrote about what does your hairstyle say about you when I was searching for a topic, I was questioning myself about my hairstyle, I didn’t know if I wanted to get a new hairstyle, and I was torn between getting a buzz cut, growing it all out into a man-bun, or getting my usual. This topic made me want to research what hairstyle best fits me, I learned about face shapes, and the best haircuts for straight or curly hair, and even picked up a few ideas about color theory. One comment made by Mia showed me that there is no fear of having a new haircut since it can always grow back, and like my friend Ray is going to do, I will definitely also try some new hairstyles this summer.

If I had to think of the most challenging assignment I had to do, it would have to be the Women in Red assignment. The hardest thing was researching and cornering all of my resources and the internet to write about my woman in red. Whenever I tried to research Lula Lowe Weeden, there were a handful of sites that talked about her, while the rest were grave finders/caretakers. I also researched the Baruch Library and found out that there was a collection of poems and bibliographies, the problem was that the book was not able to be found within the library. It was tough to look for information, but nevertheless, I was able to get a nice little bibliography about her. This research paper definitely helped me improve my research capabilities and showed me a different side of Wikipedia, it showed me the bad things and problems it had behind its Talk Page.

Just some last little remarks. I enjoyed the class we had, it was a lot of fun, and these projects were really interesting and noteworthy. I have seen that my writing has improved a little but I still have a long road ahead. I wanted to thank you Ms. Perry for a fun year, and to my classmates too, I would like to thank you for making this 7:55 class a enjoyable one.

Through the 3 major projects of this English course, I was able to develop more on my researching skills. Such as when I found out that Wikipedia can be useful by using the resources that others used for their Wikipedia article. I was always told to never use Wikipedia, so it was shocking to hear it was useful. And as I have to research articles for my papers, I started to analyze multiple different articles. This changed my mindset from usually rushing my search for any sources to now taking my time to analyze different sources. My writing has developed but I still have to practice my skills. I found it very helpful that we could re-submit our projects any time. By re-writing my paper, I was able to avoid the mistakes and understand where I could perform better. I felt more open and was able to demonstrate my best ability in writing and researching.

The project I was most proud of was the creative mix project. I worked on the topic of fashion in both the black panther and the black lives matter movement. I decided on this topic because when I was working on the first project, I encountered a article talking black representation in today’s fashion industry. And I found it shocking to hear the little to no representation of the black community. Then I started to look at the uniform that the black panther party had and I thought it would be a good idea to research about it. I found these articles interesting and researched more about it. I selected the best information I could find so that i could add them to my slides. I felt in my zone and I was able to work on my slides really efficiently.

Although I expressed how I enjoyed working on my third project based on the first one, I was struggling on the first project. I was understanding the assignment and I learned a lot about the black panther party. My issue was writing a whole rhetorical analysis paper about it. My writing skills weren’t the best and they still improvement. But I am glad we have the chance to re-write our papers. Seeing the feedback helped me understand where I went wrong or areas I can develop in. Normally I just receive a grade and it is finalized. But in this course, I received the grade and was able to work on it. I know now that I need to work on my organization and focus on topic. For my next upcoming courses, I will make sure to be aware and more open minded on my writing skills.

Here is where you will post your final reflection.