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.
