Reflection

This semester has passed by so quickly for me and as a result I learned so much from my first semester of college.  As for my writing skills, I believe I have improved drastically. In high school, I wasn’t very good at writing essays and other writings but Professor Sylvor helped me a lot and helped improve in areas I was weak with. I took her feedback from my writings and tried my best to apply it for other writings. I’ve developed more as a writer from the help I got in college and even outside of college. I started to read more from books, novels, articles, school newspaper, and even the feedback I got from the writing center. I started to write differently compared from college and highschool. High school writing for my was just answering questions or the prompt and finding evidence. College writing is different. I would have to not just find evidence to support my claim, but also to do analysis to support and connect it back to whatever the paper is asking us to do. A paper that we worked on this semester that I’m most proud of would have to be the research paper. I learned a lot about what my paper was about which was gentrification and I also learned what to look for in a research paper and what to do with the information. I also learned about Baruch’s Library resources that are available for us to use. They are credible and gives us more information about what to look for and what we can write about. One thing I struggled with in this semester was also the research paper. I struggled with where to begin, what to look for, and where I can find credible sources. However, after I read articles, and sources from the Baruch library, I began writing and helped from the writing center. This semester I’ve grown and learned differently from adjusting from high school to college.   

An identity that I have attached to me from this semester would have to be about people representing themselves and people being represented in the eyes of different people. What I mean by this is from To Kill a Mockingbird and how Tom Robinson was innocent and even when everyone in the south of whites thought he was guilty, there was still a white man, Atticus, who believed him and tried to defend him. Atticus was representing Tom, a black man in the white south and who didn’t have much odds in the case, and was defending what was right and trying to fix what was wrong in the system. Racists people convicting an innocent black man for a crime he didn’t do. Atticus showed that there is still white people in the south who weren’t racists and didn’t just view the world as white. I’m continuing to think about does the racists problem shown in To Kill a Mockingbird still exist today? I haven’t much thought about before we read the book in class but ever since I have. The thought about my own identity is clear but really representing myself isn’t so much clear. I open and represent my identity to very few people in my world. That is because not every relationship we have with people is the same. I act differently with every person I come across and it is up to time when I am able to represent my true identity. To meet the demands of college, I had to sacrifice time and people in order to get to where I am today. I had less time to be with people like friends and family, and I lost contact with people who I was close with in highschool. I think the most difficult part of college life isn’t about college life itself but the transition from highschool to college. I have to admit that I still carry some of my bad habits like procrastination from high school that won’t do me good in college. However, I have improved and will continue to improve so I can have a less stressful college experience. This semester showed me what is yet to come and what I need to do in order to be successful. It is only one of many left and hopefully I change for the better and to help me further my goals throughout the years here in Baruch.