This page is dedicated to all my reflections on certain assignments whether that be readings, Ted talks, or in class discussions.

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Adichie – The Danger of a Single Story

After listening to Adichie’s Ted Talk on single stories I realized that in order to know the truth about someone or understand one’s culture you have to look at things from their perspectives. A single persons life doesn’t speak for everyone else so in order to truly understand them you must look at them with an open mind to learn about their individuals experiences. I find Adichie’s advice crucial for my understanding of Social sciences in this semester as I must be open to doing more research and having more information on a person, topic, culture etc. to create an outstanding research paper.

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Tan & Lee

Throughout the readings the audience can see subcultures such as writing and being novelist as Amy Tan and Chang-Rae Lee both take up writing as a career and share Asian heritage. Both Tan and Lee have an outsider perspective of what their mothers are experiencing as their mothers struggle too speak fluent English and have to deal with those who do that treat them differently than others. When going over my Transcultural interview I shall approach it more in a way where I am not trying to just get my interviewee to ramble about a topic but enlighten me and others on the conflicts going on in his country and how this affects him and his family.

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Field Observation – The Botanical Gardens in Brooklyn

My field observation at the botanical gardens in Brooklyn was quite the experience. It was very pleasant to be in place with little to no noise. In the gardens I learned some stuff about field working. The first thing is just observing, a lot of being a field worker is just taking the time to notice the environment you’re in. As a field worker you want to record everything, even the little details because you never know what you may have missed, it is so significant that it is probably the answer to a question you may have had. Another thing is having patience when doing research such as field work. You want to take your time and go slow. It’s never a race to get an answer but how much insight you can get. This helps you build concrete answers and claims that can be proven through a series of experiences. Doing field work in the gardens taught me a few things about myself also. I learned that as a field worker the most significant sense is my eyesight and ability to see. At the gardens people didn’t talk as much mainly because of the sight before them in the gardens. But that’s the thing I only needed my eyesight to tell reactions and emotions, that mainly be because actions speak louder than words. I could see the enjoyment of others on their faces in the gardens as they stroll through tall bushes and flowers with grace.

Mama Day – Gloria Naylor

The excerpt Mama Day by Gloria Naylor was quite a difficult text for me to read. It felt as if there were very long run offs that made me forget what I was reading. Also the dialect was even more challenging as it is still English but has this southern feel to it which I am not quite used to reading. What I found interesting about this excerpt that is reminds me of the book The Color Purple by Alice Walker. The books have different stories of different experiences but it shares the idea of two colored women growing up in the south facing adversity with discrimination upon their level of intellect. Now to clarify again the excerpt by Naylor was a little hard for me to understand but I was able to understand that Georgia and South Carolina wanted to make money off of Willow Springs due to its land and people. What truly stood out to me is how both states declined to help Willow Springs in need of help to rebuild infrastructure but wanted them to make deals with each other. This was just a moment of realization how people are willing to use each other but never help. This also plays a part in what I learned about culture. Traditions and heritage are foundations of who we are and we should never sell ourselves short. The theme is to know your worth.

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Wehle – We Kissed the tomato and Then the Sky

 When reading Wehle – We Kissed the Tomato and Then the Sky I noticed she uses a lot of tracking her positions. The author is able to present her relationship with her mother through the personal moments she had with her mother such as meditation practices to portray her understanding of being grateful for the time she was given with her mother. This use of gratefulness ties into the fact that her story is arranged in a time frame of where her mind is opened up more about her mothers experiences fighting death.My field observation is mainly about parenting and what are good parenting practices. The theme of time portrays how life is so short and it’s the small moments in life that matters. I feel like this strategy wouldn’t be useful in my field observation as my emotions and input isn’t necessarily what I am going to incorporate a lot. On the other hand the use of time would play a part in observing how families develop connection from a young age to hold a certain respect and attitude towards adults.

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Baldwin & Shively

When I read Baldwin’s essay it’s not a clear distinction of what specific culture is being presented but the information describes Harlem as an area of colored people. There is also this culture of white discriminating against colored people as police brutally beat civilians and label them as Negroes”. This word ranges from multiple different races including those of Puerto Rican heritage as a 47 year old man gets beaten to near death for being associated as and with those of color. In order to get a more in depth description of what the culture is like the field worker should focus heavily on the area of Harlem and what the community is like. As we can see the field worker mentions the communities so little it is hard to really tell what the culture is like amongst the people of Harlem which kinda makes it hard for the audience to understand why colored people are getting beat randomly. A field worker should be using other sources like witnesses from the community of Harlem who these incidents occurring and understanding their take on the situation to have more than just a general understanding that white folks hate black folks. After reading Baldwin’s and Shively’s articles I found the time throughout the passage very concerning, the particular reason is that as time has passed there still seems to be this recurrence of racism and discrimination towards colored people. Shively’s article is a great example of this as he points out George Floyd’s situation where he was killed by a white officer who wouldn’t get his knee off of Mr. Floyd’s neck after he pleaded he can’t breathe. The article proves that racism is still a common occurrence during today’s times. The next step to solving these forms of hate speech is calling out police departments for these despicable actions. The more we sit back and let these crimes continue the more they will occur. 

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One Course Learning Objective

One learning objective from the Learning Outcomes in the syllabus that I have fully engaged with was number 3. Number states I will “negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation”. This was the objective I truly found challenging engaging with as both my Transcultural essay and Field observation essay required me to highlight certain topics without adding my opinions on the situation. For example my Transcultural essay focused on the conflict of D.R and Haiti for land and resources through the perspective of a Dominican himself. There were some times where my interviewee did say some ignorant things that I wanted to argue against but I had to put my pride aside to acquire the information relevant to my topic and not create an argument that could jeopardize the whole interview. My second experience was with my Field observation essay. Since I was observing an online parenting community I found some conflicts that parents could really solve such as distancing from relationships and connecting with others. I wanted to add my opinion on how to deal with such problems in my essay but I then remembered the essay focuses on how the online community reacts to each other which means my experiences shouldn’t be presented in these scenarios. This idea of writing for your own goals is something I had to develop but I later got the hang of it as I wrote more based on research rather than experiences.

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Reverse Outline

When writing I felt that the reverse outline wasn’t really helpful to me. The conflict with the reverse outline is that from every paragraph I take one sentence that will be a topic for each slide n.which I didn’t find necessary because my slides needed to be highlighted with the most significant information and the parts that don’t take too much time to break down. So what I did is group my findings and the evaluations with those findings into 1 slide leaving another for detailed information like graphs and studies. This allowed for smoother transitions from each of my findings. The reverse outline may be helpful in the future when I have more time to present because five minutes isn’t necessarily enough to unpack each paragraph through a sentence.

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Composition Process

What I have learned that is most useful to the composition process is how to analyze and evaluate information. Throughout the course of this semester all my assignments have helped push me to break down information, especially my resources. This was the hardest part for me as a lot of my work used to contain more summaries rather than understanding why the information is important. I would always know why the information is important but the goals of each assignment remind me to stay focused and keep it simple. Learning to stay on track has been the benefit of this class because I’m always reminded that I’m writing for a purpose, not just to put words on a piece of paper.