It’s done! Final blog post by Stephanie Jimenez

At the beginning of the semester I somehow believed that I wouldn’t change as a writer. Not because I thought I was just that amazing but because I truly didn’t think there was enough time to fix myself as a writer. As I progressed through the semester though I came to realize that my issues as a writer were not that unique and was actually something many others shared. This helped in improving myself because I wasn’t “that far gone”. The research paper actually helped me realize this a lot because it was such a long project that I had no choice but to continuously recheck and reformat it. Whenever I did revise it I would use the opinions of not only myself but others around me as well in order to create an unbiased opinion on the paper. I think the opinions of these people really helped open my eyes to little mistakes I continuously made and therefore improving my skills. While the research paper was the assignment that most helped me improve the analysis paper on the other hand gave me the most challenges. I truly was just not confident about the topic and direction I was going in. I had so many loosely put together ideas but no solid direction and that threw me off heavily. By starting with an unstable base I think the rest of the assignment just went down with it. I had trouble at every direction. Writing simple topic sentences became so hard and ultimately killed my confidence while writing the paper. That’s why I do believe it was my worst work.

While I do believe I progressed overall as a writer there’s obviously still much for me to work on. The most consistent problem I came across in my writing was definitely passive voice. At one point I ran my research paper through the premium version of Grammarly and almost all of the comments about my content were about passive voice. So moving on I do want to focus more on how I word things and create a mindset where I can tell when I am using passive voice. Even now I don’t realize when I use passive voice and could possibly have this entire blog post sound like passive voice. I will change this though because I think it will take my writing to a next level.

When reflecting upon the readings we’ve done in class there’s obviously a theme that is consistent and that is identity. Drinking coffee elsewhere has to be one of the most obvious readings where the concept of identity is discussed on many levels. I found that especially interesting because when identity is spoken about especially with young adults it usually involves a “coming of age” moment where they “find themselves” and this just isn’t accurate for Dina in the story. It almost seems as though she constantly progresses and then regresses just as quickly and I found that especially important because its reality. Not everyone has a happy ending and finds themselves. Instead it’s a fight that one is constantly in. I related heavily to this and even now see it within myself as I reflect upon the semester. I myself have not had a happy ending with this ending of the semester as a person. I haven’t dramatically changed for the better in all honestly regardless of what I’ve gone through. Some may even say I’ve changed for the worst but at the same time its all opinions. I personally don’t think I’ve become a bad or good person I just think I changed. Others may have a different opinion and I think that’s the reality of identity. It’s just whatever people make it. The only opinion of identity I care about is my own because I’m the one who lives with it and that’s what I think I got from this course. Just being confident in ones opinion.

My first semester at Baruch was definitely not surprising or anything that was out of hand. Although this doesn’t mean I didn’t have difficulty because I surely did many times. I just mean to say it wasn’t unexpected or unfair. When talking to others about their final exams specifically I found out that many people had five to six exams whereas I only had two. I found this to be beyond fair and something I simply couldn’t complain about. I appreciate though that throughout the semester I began to understand how to organize the work I had to do better. I hope this helps next semester when I begin top juggle two jobs and school. Overall it was a pretty fair semester and I hope to see more progress as I continue on.