Author Archives: LAUREN FLORES

Lauren Flores

Professor Sylvor

English 2100

December 18, 2019

         My First English class Experience in College

               Going into my first English class of my undergrad years I was very nervous. I have always loved my high school English classes because they were places where I can express my perspective on books, but something I knew this classes lacked was their help with grammar. When viewing the syllabus for my first English class I was scared to find out that we would be working on our grammar. Looking back to the class the ultimate struggle I have had was with grammar because I did not know anything about it. I had forgotten the rules of grammar but when I started using Launchpad it was a great way to make my grammar better. Even though I feel like I grew with my grammar use I still feel I need help with capitalization, and I know it sounds easy, but it really is not for me. When creating the title for this piece I was not sure what words needed capitalization and which didn’t. Over my winter break that is what I will be working on because I do not want the struggle of not knowing to hit me during my second semester.

             We did many readings in our English class, we read literacy narratives which really stuck with me the most. Hearing people’s struggle in learning how to read and write and what it meant to them made me reflect on my struggles and what it meant to me. I knew that my literacy narrative includes struggle, but I didn’t fully reflect until I saw what it meant to Chang-rae-Lee the author of Mute in an English-Only World. Seeing the author narrate how their family was treated made me, upset, angry, and then surprised because I realized that my family and I were treated the same. Literacy narratives were very interesting and made me view my work differently. Seeing people be treated different because they do not know how to speak, read, and write English made me push myself to learn English and to defend those people.

            Something that was challenged the most by my new schedule was my time management because I had everything close to me before. My Elementary, Middle, and highschool were all less than 15 minutes away from me and when I had to go to Manhattan it meant an hour commute. I had my English 2100 class in the morning so I had to get up earlier than usual and make time for things like late trains and long elevator lines. My biggest difficulty became my friend when I learned how to face it. I was only late two times and even then I knew that there was a certain way to approach being late because job and school was important and had certain ways of approach.             

            Being a part of Baruch and SEEK I had a great support system during my first semester. I went to the writing center in the SEEK office when I needed help writing essays and my research paper. I went to SAC tutoring when I needed help with math and communication’s speech. I overall found myself with great resources at Baruch.

             Overall, I think I was successful in my first year or English class and College in general. I built skulls like my use of commas and being on time. I am excited to start my next semester and see what Baruch has in store for me.

Lauren Flores

My Research process has changed attention from one topic to another. I went from thinking about a topic that was deep and important to just moving on to a topic that would be worth while investigating for me. I was focused on researching Public school students’ opportunities in New York compared to those of private schools. This is a topic that interest me, but that topic is very self-explanatory without the research. I was already drawing a conclusion without knowing any stats because it was a question that didn’t need much research to answer.

I switched to the question of how social media affects people’s engagement in voting. Many people use social media, but I would like to research how it affects the way they vote or what they do. This new question is not simply answered but will require research from me to answer it or get closer to a concrete answer.

I am now up to finding my sources which will also develop the main question. My professor has taught me how to play with my words in order to find more varied results. I am very fortunate that the question I am researching does has many different sources, but they do target different parts of my question. There are some sources talking about how social media influences the youths’ voting activism. There are sources that discuss how social media affects the youth’s activism in global warming. So I am now just reshaping my question based on the sources that I find.

What it is to be a Mexican woman.

I always knew that I was treated differently from other people. I am a Mexican immigrant in the United States where there is bias, and we are unwelcomed. I am Mexican and there is a negative aspect around that word especially by people like the President of the United States. For a long time, I have felt like I had to defend my who I am and where I come from.

Being a Woman does not make being a Mexican American person any easier. There is so much machismo in Mexican culture. It means misogyny but in Mexico men are proud to be misogynistic. The men take pride in being machos. Being machos means that women cannot do everything they do and not as good as they can.

The biggest problem I see in my community is how were meant to act. When I was growing up I was questioned for not being a party person, and I was I just was not into partying every week. The girls that were like me were all very different from me. They are told that being party girls is cool and not caring about an education was fine, but I did not see it this way. I feel like girls like me have no role models which have been truly successful in the United States, so we do not strive for it.

The issue with people in my community is not having someone to help guide them. Someone who shows them that we can be successful. I looked up to my teacher who looked like me and came from the same background. She went to NYU and she became a teacher in my high school she helped me with my college application process.

I know there are programs which connect people to role models and guiders, but the issue can be resolved when people are aware of the resources they have.

Cool Sound to Listen to

Something that I love online is YouTube videos of meditation. When you are going through a lot or just want to meditate you can go online and YouTube it. I do this because sometimes I can get stressed or procrastinate a lot and these videos help a lot. My favorite person to do meditation is Michael Sealey. He also reads bedtimes for grownups and even though that might sound silly it is nice for me because it helps me sleep. Before test I listen to test anxiety meditation videos. When I am having trouble doing my homework or assignments I listen to meditation for procrastination and it helps me concentrate. To sleep I listen to meditation for Negative energy and to stable your chakras. I love when mediation or story videos have the sound of rain in the background.

Study music that is also good is lofi beats by chilledcow which streams live all the time. I listen to lofi hip hop beats when I an assignment that doesn’t need too much concentration. I suggest listening to Beethoven when you do need music to concentrate.

Music really governments my life. I find it very cool that music can have so much emotion. Music will be there for any mood you have. I have party music, study music, and workout music. Knowing so much music connects you to so many people. I suggest going to YouTube or whatever platform you use. I would love it if you guys comment on my post and let me know what music you listen to.

I consider myself a femenist because I believe that women and men should be treated the same but also that no gender is inferior to the other. The New York Times article This is an Article About Women by Nicola Pardy the author talks about how in recent history society has been putting catch phrases about gender equality on clothes and other things but now we simply put the word Women on clothes and other things. I believe that if stating your gender is important you should do it, I don’t think that simply stating your gender should be your best attempt to obtain gender equality. Even though to some people who are cisgender stating you are a women is not difficult for other people who are not cisgender women it is really impactful to state you identify as a women because you are in danger of peoples response to that.

When Pardy talks about the shirts I giggled because they are things that I say. When having conversations with my brother he can be annoyed because he thinks that women and men do not have inequality but I do not just state I am a woman I also state why it is I am a feminist woman. I do contest people’s opinions all the time and I love hearing opinions of others because I think that is the way we truly grow our mindsets. This article can reveal my character because it is the way I feel about a specific issue (feminism) but also because it demonstrates the way I would approach a different opinion, with respect.

This is the article I reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/opinion/women-feminist-tshirts.html

I really cannot say I am like one writer or the other. I believe that everyone is different in their way of writing you cannot expect people to all write the same way. The way of writing is not a one size fits all but instead the concept that everyone’s body is different. For me my writing process I always have had and that’s because I find that is what works best for me. Anne Lamott and George Dila both have their own way of writing but that does not mean one is right or the other is wrong. Lamott wants to get everything on to the paper and that is understandable because we often times have so much to say, and the way I do that is by creating a brainstorm paper in which I also pour all my ideas onto. After that I begin to show the same strategies as Dila by wanting to have the first thing I write be well thought out but that to me is when I write an organized collection of my ideas. For example, if I am writing a paper about my childhood I would first have all my ideas written on paper and observe patterns, after this I would create an organized outline of what are my main points and work down to the other points. And at the end of this I start to right with a good idea of what I am writing. Everyone is different and so are their way of writing.

I care about the world’s history because it is true what people say about history always repeating itself. I am a very opinionated person and I believe that so much in society is wrong, that people suffer emotionally and physically because other people harm them. I think that everyone needs to learn about World history in the most unbiased way possible. The world needs to learn about our mistakes in order to not do them again, mistakes like genocide and slavery. It is clear that not everyone has a neutral education on world history because if we did we would have more people trying to stop it. 

Genocide and slavery is happening around us still in this day and that will never stop if people do not know about our World history and what we have done before to stop it. An education leads to critical thinking and action. We can never take the correct action if we do not know the correct information.

This image is an image of me in my Pre-Kindergarten graduation. Although this is just a picture of my class to  me it means much more because it is when I met my best friend’s Kelly and Jt friends who I graduated with, played with,went to Disney World, and grew up with. It is in my picture and we still post it as a throwback in social media for jiggles. I look at this image and I remember the fond memories of not worrying about homework or my future. As a kid we had few social constraints. We used to live day to day and that is something I want to do more of.