Reflections...

The journey into my though process is a very hectic and scary place. I am a 24 year old, determined young woman. I work full time, with a little part time work on the side, I go to school almost full time, and I am a beyond full time single mother to a beautiful little 2 year old girl. My day to day life consists of working, wiping noses, homework, and cleaning messy hands. I try to keep my thoughts organized and on task, but my busy lifestyle usually requires a little more thinking outside the box and flexibility, aka I tend to be a little random. I am putting myself through all of this mayhem in hopes of being an Elementary teacher, preferably sooner rather than later. Hopefully this little bit about me gives you some insight as to how I process things.

I have learned a lot this quarter in English 101D online. I learned about identity, and what helps construct and develop our identities. Our identities are not only our heritage and culture; they can come from our communities as well. This led us into our next unit on community. Our study on communities taught me that there is such a diverse array of communities not just consisting of those directly around us. We can be part of blogging communities online, or a community of craigslist shoppers, or even just a group of comic book collectors can be considered a community. A community is loosely translated into any group with something in common. We then moved on to a unit on tradition. This unit taught me a lot because it made me question the origin of and meaning behind some traditions. It was interesting to find out that some traditions were started kind of randomly, or based on a need for capitalism. I also realized the importance traditions can play in some of our lives.

I have chosen four of my writings from this quarter to help showcase what I have learned. The first writing I have picked is a piece that I believe shows my critical thinking skills. We had to do a timed write based on a movie we watched and discussed, and the movie I chose was Fight Club. I feel that working under pressure is something I am good at, so thinking critically is a good skill for this. The next piece I picked was from our Community unit and titled Community of Single Parents. I seemed to have a hard time talking about the differences on the communities themselves, rather than the characteristics of those in the community. I have done a revision on a portion of this paper and hope it made it stronger.

When I am writing a piece for a diverse group of people to read, I always try to make sure it is something that I think people can relate to. I feel I showed this well in one of my blogs titled Did Someone Say Takeout? In this blog I sound like every other random person, which makes it appealing to the average person. This paper was my choice for illustrating my awareness of audience and voice. My final piece is a Writer’s choice, or a personal favorite. I wanted to include a piece that felt like me, so I choice discussion board post titled Uh-man-duh, which is just my real name Amanda, phonetically. If you know me, or knew me, you would know this paper sounds exactly like me. This is how all of my stories go. I can be a little quirky and I just try to entertain.

I hope my introduction here has showcased what I feel I have learned this quarter. My chosen writings are things that I worked very hard on and am very proud of. Following this letter will be my chosen pieces listed above. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.