REFLECTION

My Experience with First Year Writing

This class definitely challenged me in ways that I was not necessarily prepared to be challenged in. Signing up for the class, I was not aware of the conversations that were going to be taking place, and I will admit, even though I was aware of the subject matter after, I still did not think that I was going to have to make any statements. I thought I was going to be able to fly through this class. I was wrong, but I am grateful that I embraced that I was wrong and was still able to learn.
In regards to my writing skills in themselves, I feel as though they have grown slightly in this writing experience; not really on par with how my ability to join conversations that needed to be had did. I was able to learn how to source and find sources in different ways than I had previously. Furthermore, I learned how to develop perspectives and have difficult conversations with my peers which I feel better helped me grow as a writer. We used different sources of media, bodys of work, and film to bolster ideas and stances in this class, which was a different experience from anything I had ever done in a writing class. 
I feel like the pieces that are highlighted in my blog show significant improvement in my ability to analytically write and communicate what I believe. I was forced to accept that the subject matter was heavier than anything I had written about previously. In my cultural narrative, I was not comfortable writing about myself and my struggle with my identity at the beginning. After I had gone through one revision process, I was already mid way through by cultural rhetoric analysis. This paper helped open my eyes to not only my ability to communicate and understand the material of cultural violence, but also introduced me to the resources at Northeastern University that I could use to help me with my cultural narrative. This helped me produce a cultural narrative that I believe accurately displays my struggles but also explores an interesting conversation that I have had with myself and my identity. My cultural rhetoric analysis was done in a manner that let me choose, to some extent, what I wanted to highlight in my analysis. This choice made me comfortable and I was able to meet the goals of the assignment better. I feel as though these goals in this assignment readily align with the goals of this class and I am glad that I was able to accomplish this task. I used this to carry into my third piece that I have highlighted in this website: my photo essay. This was a project in which I had full ability to choose that I wanted to highlight the oppression of females and the cultural violence that this leads to. I am proud of my works that I have presented in the blogs. 
The challenges that I faced in this class were with the cultural and racial dialogue and the conversations that partaked with it. I was uncomfortable with forming stances at the beginning of this class, mostly because I did not feel as though my opinions were valid in the grand scheme of things. However, I learned from this class that that is not the case and in fact it is this ignorance and lack of participation that perpetuates cultural violence and racial illiteracy. It is when we are unwilling to partake in the dialogue and grow in our own understandings that we naively allow the adversities to continue. I am grateful for this experience and the growth I got to experience in this class.