For this blog post I’m going to write another reflection. In a previous post I wrote my midterm reflection. This time I’m writing my final reflection. To help me write this, I went and looked back at everything I have done in this class.
Coming into this class I was expecting the same thing as other english classes I have taken. I expected we were gonna read old books, and write about them. Instead, in this class I was able to do things I had never done before. The things I got to do in this class include making a website, writing scenes and being my own guinea pig. The first ever thing I got to do in this class was make my own website. This was an exciting experience for me as prior to this, I had never made a website. It was also exciting because it served as an online portfolio for all of my work. This means that in 50 years, I can come back and look at what I’ve done. The three main things on my website include my narrative project, my research project, and the blogs I made about them. My first ever project in this class was my narrative project. For this project I had to write about a scene in my life that had a big impact on me. In this class I learned that to make a scene, I have to use sensory details, dialogue, and symbols. To practice this, I used my blog to write scenes. In my blog posts I wrote scenes including me going to walmart, riding a bus, giving a presentation, and more. I liked this because although I’ve read scenes in many books before, I had never wrote a proper scene myself. That was one of my projects. The other project on my website is my research project. For this project I was introduced to the “three good things” gratitude process. For the project I had to write a paper on whether or not the process improved my well being. In order to do this I had to experiment on myself, doing something I had never done before, and that is being my own guinea pig. I used my blog to practice writing about this project as well. I practiced writing all the sections of the paper on my blog. Those were the projects I experienced and put on my website. Something I said before was that I appreciated that this class allowed me to do things I had never done before. There are two other things. One of them is that I like and appreciate that everything I had to do in this class was centered around me. I was the main character in every project and blog post I wrote. For the narrative project, I wrote a scene that was about my life. I was the star of every scene I wrote in my blog post. For the research project I didn’t have to research some famous person, place, or event in history, I had to do research on me. That is something I’m grateful for. The other thing I’m grateful for is the final exam. I’m grateful that there was no final exam. In most of my classes I have been taught something and then tested on it. In this class, instead of being tested on what I learned, I was able to apply what I learned in projects and blog posts. Those were my experiences in this class.
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For the next week I will be writing a research paper on the “three good things” gratitude process. For this blog post I am practicing writing the findings section of the paper.
I first found out about this process in my english composition class. Each week we are assigned to write a blog. When it came time for a new post, our professor to us to try the “three good things process.” He assigned us to write down three good things that happen. So I did. I made a journal, and for seven days I wrote down three good things that happened to me. It was a new experience. I found that while writing I started to feel appreciative. It put me in a good mood. Hoewer, while it did put me in a good mood, it didn’t last that long. After 10 or 20 minutes I went back to my usual ways. Because of that I stopped doing the process once the assignment was complete. A few days after the assignment I decided to go back into my journal. I did this to see whether there were any themes. Some of the things I wrote down include “I played Tennis with my dad in the morning. We hadn’t played in a while… My brother lives in North Carolina. Today he said he’s thinking about coming to Philadelphia for Thanksgiving...I’m grateful that I can sit down and watch a soccer game with my dad...My mom was taking a walk outside. On the phone she chuckled while telling me to go pick up the laundry from the dryer. I’m glad I made sure that it was my family’s laundry this time.” The theme that I noticed is family. I noticed that my family was in over half of my journal. This made me realise a couple of things. It made me realise that my family is a big part of my life. It made me realise how much I have been taking them for granted. It made me so grateful to be a part of my family, and that makes me feel good. That is how the three good things process had a positive impact on my life. For the next week I will be writing a research paper on the “three good things” gratitude process. For this blog post I am practicing writing the literature review section of the paper.
The word psychology used to have a sad reputation to it. Whenever people heard it, they thought of mental illness, sickness, and insanity. Martin Seligman wanted to change this. He wanted to focus on the good things of psychology. He became the founder of positive psychology. Martin Seligman’s positive psychology focused on well-being. One might say that the definition of well-being is the state of being happy. Martin Seligman had a different idea in mind. To define well-being he came up with the acronym known as P.E.R.M.A. This acronym stands for Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaningfulness, Accomplishments. Positive emotions are the things in life that make you feel happy. Engagement is how you interact with the things around you. Relationships is how you interact with the people around you. The things in life that have an impact on you are the things that make your life meaningful. Finally, accomplishments are the goals in your life. This includes getting a good grade on your test, getting a job, winning a trophy, meeting a deadline and more. Most people will never stop being hungry for more. There will always be more. You get a 100 thousand dollars, now you want a million dollars. You get a million dollars, now you want a billion. You get an apartment, now you want a house, you get a house, now you want a mansion. A person can’t reach well-being with this type of mentality. You have to stop and appreciate the things you already have in life. This is known as gratitude. To practice gratitude Martin Seligman created the “three good things” gratitude process. The “three good things” gratitude process is meant to have a positive impact on your well-being. The way it works is simple. The process itself takes place over the course of seven days. What you have to do is write down three good things that happened to you and that you are grateful for each day. It is important that you write them down on paper instead of thinking about it in your head. After you do this for seven days, your well-being should be positively impacted. For the next couple of weeks I will be writing a research paper. For this blog post I’m am practicing writing my introduction for the paper. This means I might not use this specific introduction for the final draft of my paper.
Your dreams came true. You have a beautiful house. You have beautiful cars. You have gotten yourself a job that pays quite well. You’re a success. However, even with all of these, you still don’t feel happy. Why is that? Is there something wrong with you? Well no, not quite. There are studies that show that there is nothing wrong with you. Dr. Martin Seligman developed a process to improve your well-being. He defines well being as the acronym P.E.R.M.A, which stands for positive emotion, engagement, relationship, meaningfulness, and accomplishment. The process is called “three good things.” This process is easy to follow. You have to write down three good things that happened during the day each day for one week. I tried this process myself. For seven days I wrote down three good things. Does this process work? Can the “three good things process” have a positive impact on someone’s well being? For me, the “three good things process did have a positive impact on my well-being. Dear Dr. Seligman
For the past week I decided to go through your “three good things” process. The purpose of this process is to improve one’s well being. The way the process works is simple. You have to write three good things that happen to you each day, for seven days. The results however, are not as simple. This process did indeed improve my well being, but only for a short period of time. For example, I wrote that I was grateful that my dad picked me up from school. The reason I was grateful is because usually I have to take two buses to get home. When I wrote about this it made me feel happy and appreciative. But I soon forgot about it later and went back to feeling normal. Same thing occurred with another example. I wrote that I was grateful that the program I used to do homework, explained how each problem is done. Again, this only made me feel happy, for a short period of time. There are a couple of questions to consider. The first is time. Is seven days enough time to for this process to have an effect? For me personally the answer to that is no. Like I stated previously, the process didn’t have an enough effect on me. I think that is due to time. Because of this, I will continue to do the process for seven more days and see what happens. The other question is does this work on everybody. I believe the answer to that is also no. I found out about this process through a class I’m taking in college. I was assigned to do this process. This means that other people were assigned as well. At the end of the process, my classmates were asked how they felt about it. Some said it worked for them, while others said it no effect at all. This makes me believe that whether it works or not depends on the person. That is how I felt about your process of “three good things” For this blog post I was asked to write a journal entry for seven days. For each day I had to find three good things that happened to me. This was supposed to have a positive impact on my well being. To do this I read : What is Positive Pyschology & Why Is it Important? (Positive Psychology Program), Greater Good in Action: Science-Based Practices for a Meaningful Life (UC Berkeley's Project Home Page), and Three Good Things (Greater Good in Action)
Tuesday: 10-30-18
Wednesday: 10-31-18
Thursday: 11-01-18
Friday: 11-02-18
Saturday: 11-03-18
Sunday: 11-04-18
Monday: 11-05-18
For this blog post I have written a midterm reflection for myself in 3rd person. The purpose of this reflection is to make me better for the rest of the course. To help me write this reflection I used the reading Genres in Academic Writing: Reflection
It is the end of week eight in this English Composition Course. That means half of the semester has gone by. For half of a semester Ani Tapia has had many experiences. He has also learned many things from these experiences. One thing Ani has learned about are symbols. To help him learn he read the reading “Hills Like White Elephants” (Ernest Hemingway). While reading this Ani was able to see the symbols Ernest Hemingway used. For example, he saw that Ernest used a table to symbolise an operating table, or gray clouds to symbolise a bad event. However even with readings like this, Ani struggles to stay consistent on developing symbols in his writings. Some of his writings have clear symbols, while others don’t. An example of when Ani used symbols was in his blog post titled “Composing a Present Scene with Dialogue and Symbolism”. In this post Ani used a broken wheel on a shopping cart to symbolise his tendency to easily give up. On other writings Ani struggles to develop a good symbol. For example, in his blog post titled “Composing a Past Scene” he tries to symbolise the crumbled relationship between him and his mother by using crumbled green grass, and green symbolising growth. Another thing he struggled with was finding topics to write about. Since most of his writing has been about his life, he has struggled to come up with topics other find interesting and read instead of skipping through. This has resulted in last minute topic changes in more than 95% of his blog post including his narrative project. Fortunately, it hasn't all been negative. There have been some positive experiences. Throughout the course a main learning topic has been creating scenes. Through readings like “Making Scenes in Memoir” (Lee Martin) Ani has learned that to make a scene requires using sensory details. He’s also learned that to get a reader's attention, he has to start his writings by diving straight to the scene and giving context later. Ani has shown this growth through out his blog posts and narrative project. In his early blog posts like “Presentation Day” didn’t dive straight to the scene but rather begin by describing the setting. This is not the case with his narrative project in which Ani goes right in. Going forward, Ani has made a couple of intrinsic goals for himself. His first goal is to keep practicing the stuff he struggled with in the first half of the semester. This includes developing more symbols in his writings. Another goal is to find better motivation. Ani has missed a couple of deadlines this semester which shows that his current motivations might not be enough. These were Ani Tapia’s experiences through out the first semester. I have made a found poem for this blog post. A found poem is made by taking words or phrases from text and arranging them to forum a poem. I used my narrative project to for the poem. My narrative project is about how I became shy. OH PLEASE DON’T BE ME, PLEASE DON’T BE ME!!!” I was saying to myself. “Ani” she called out, “Come up to the board.” I felt my heart drop to and my cheeks turn red. “NOOO” I was eight years old. It was 3rd grade in Berat Albania in 2008, and the 2nd day of English class. It wasn't a class where you would learn about literature and read books. It was a class where you would learn to speak the English language. Facing in front of me stood my English teacher. She was blond, skinny, tall, and in her 20’s. To the right of me was a big classroom of 25 people and they were all staring at me. With an upset look on her face she asked me “Pse je vone dhe pa uniformen” (Why are you late and without your uniform?) “Sepse po bie shi perjashta” (Because it’s raining outside.) “Edhe cha pastaj, ata nuk jan vone.” (So what, they’re not late.), she says pointing at the rest of the class. “Ata jan ne koh” (They’re on time.) “Me fal” (I’m sorry.) As I looked down at the floor feeling sad I felt her pen smacking the top of my head. “Kjo nuk lejohet” (This is unacceptable.), she said, “Shko mbrapa classes dhe ri tek cepi” (Go in the back and stand in the corner for the rest of class.) As I walked embarrassed to the back I heard her tell the class “ Mendon nga qe po iken ne Americ, mund te bej cfar te doj.” (Thinks he can do whatever he wants cause he’s moving to America.) “ Nuk eshte e vertet ”(That’s not true.) “ Qepe gojen dhe vashdo “ (Keep your mouth shut and keep moving) Later in the class the teacher started to call out students to write draw and write the name of shapes in English. I knew some shapes but not all so I was hoping I wouldn’t get picked. I felt my heart drop and my cheeks turn red as she said “Ani… ajde visato dhe skrual rethin ne Anglisht tek drasa.” (Ani.. Come draw and write the circle on the board in English) “MOS” (Oh no!), I said to myself. “Un sedih cfare eshte rrethi ne Anglisht” (I don’t know what a circle is in English.) I went up to the board barely moving my body and grabbed the chalk and drew a circle. Not knowing what to write below it I took a guess. Lookin at what I wrote the teacher said “ Aje serioshizht? Ti shkruaj katror, Square esthe katror jo reth o budalla.” (Are you serious? You wrote square. Square is a square not a circle you idiot.) I was so uncomfortable not just by this, but by the sound of laughter coming from the class. She then said something that I remember clearly to this day “ Wow, dhe ti do ikesh ne Amerik.”(Wow, and you’re moving to America.) With a tear rolling down my eye I walked back to the back of the class. Do you think the narrative provides enough descriptive language to create a compelling found poem? not really If not, how do you plan to revise the descriptive language in the narrative? I plan to look at the words I used and find better synnonims for them. Do you think the descriptive language more so creates a setting or delivers the subtext of a theme? I think it creates a setting but not much of a theme. In revision, will you focus on using description to develop more of the setting or more of a theme? I will focus on using description to develop more of a theme. In class my classmates presented their scenes. After hearing feedback, I made some changes to my own past scene. The scene in this blog post is the revision of a scene I made in a previous post titled “Composing a past scene.” If you would like to read the original, then click here.
A sudden feeling of da-dum..da-dum..da-dum went across my chest as I noticed her right index finger facing toward it on the wall. “What’s this?” she said. It was a cold windy afternoon in an otherwise clear sunny day in 2007. I was seven years old. At the time my family and I were living in an apartment in Berat, Albania. We were on the 2nd floor. “Alright, here you go” my mom said as she rested the plate on the table in front of me. It was green peas. A meal I enjoy today, but back then, my tongue just couldn't stand it. It didn’t matter who cooked it. Seeing a disgusted look on my face my mom added “That plate better be empty when I get back” as she closed the door. I grabbed my spoon and tasted it. “Ew!!” Just chewing on them left a bad taste. “Ughhh, how am I going to finish this?”, I said to myself. Then an idea came to me. I went and opened the window in the living room. I looked down to see nice green grass surrounding the building. “This is brilliant.” I say to myself. I came back to the kitchen to grab the plate. As I was walking toward the window I notice that I spilled some juice on the floor. I put the plate on a table, grabbed a napkin, and cleaned up the stain. “Phew”, I said to myself as I threw the napkin on the green trash can, “Good thing I noticed that.” I continued towards the window and felt a light breeze come in as I opened it. I grab the plate and gently tilt it over. The sound of those peas hitting the grass shocked me a little as it was coming to me what I was doing. It didn’t stop me tho. I continued until the plate was empty and that the only thing remaining were the stains around it that showed it previously contained something. I closed the window and put the plate back on the table. About twenty minutes later I hear the front door open as my mom came back. After we greet each other she asked “Did you finish?” “Of course” “The whole thing?” “Uhuhh” “Let me see” I grabbed the plate and tilted it for her to see. “Good job!”, she said. A couple of hours passed. I was in my room doing homework when I hear my mom call “Ani!” “Yeah” “Come here!” I left my room and went to the kitchen. to see my mom by the window pointing at something below it on the wall. I could feel the left side of my chest beating as my heart was racing. It was a stain. “What is this?” she asked. “Umm… I don’t…. Um… I don’t know.” “It’s a stain. It smells like peas. Did… Did you dump them outside?” “No” “Don’t lie to me” “No” “You swear?” “Yes” “So if I go outside I won’t find them?” “Yes.” There was a brief pause. Then she said “Okay.” I felt a bit of relief that I got away with it. It was short last hoewer as I saw my mom putting on her coat and leaving. She came back a few minutes later. I can’t remember what I saw first: the anger on her face, or green peas covered by crumbled blades of green grass sitting in her right glove. “You lied to me!” she said. With tears rolling down my face I cried “I’m sorry!” “Why would you lie” “I don’t know, it didn't taste good.” “I don’t care if it didn’t taste good! It’s healthy and you should if ate it.” “Okay!” “There are people out there begging to eat not only do you just toss it, but you lied to me about it.” “I’m sorry.” A tear rolled down her left eye as she said “I can’t believe you lied to me.” To help me write this post I listened to the podcast What You Don't Know (Lulu Wang) ,and read My Name is Margaret. For this blog post I’m practicing writing a scene from my past in which I made two decisions that had a negative impact. The scene takes place in Albania. I didn’t speak English back then so the dialogue was spoken in Albanian. Hoewer I have translated it.
It was a cold afternoon in 2007. I was seven years old. At the time my family and I were living in an apartment in Berat, Albania. We were on the 2nd floor. “Alright, here you go” my mom said as she rested the plate on the table in front of me. It was peas. A meal I enjoy today, but back then, my tongue just couldn't stand it. It didn’t matter who cooked it. Seeing my disgust my my mom added “That plate better be empty when I get back” as she closed the door. I grabbed my spoon and tasted it. “Ew!!” Just chewing on them left a bad taste. I said to myself “Ughhh, how am I going to finish this?” Then an idea came to me. I went and opened the window in the living room. I looked down to see grass surrounding the building. “This is brilliant.” I say to myself. I came back to the kitchen to grab the plate. As I was walking toward the window I notice that I spilled some juice on the floor. I put the plate on a table, grabbed a napkin, cleaned up the stain and continued to the window. I felt a light breeze come in as I opened it. I grab the plate and gently tilt it over. I hear the peas flying down. The sound of it hitting the grass shocked me a little as it was coming to me what I was doing. This didn’t stop me tho. I continued until the plate was empty and there was nothing left except the stains around it that showed it previously contained something. I close the window and put the plate back on the table. About twenty minutes later I hear the front door open as my mom came back. After we greet each other she asks “Did you finish?” “Yes” “The whole thing?” “Uhuhh” “Let me see” I grabbed the plate and tilted it for her to see. Seeing it’s empty she smiled and said “Good job!” A couple of hours passed. I was in my room doing homework when I hear my mom call me. “Ani!” “Yeah” “Come here!” I left my room and went to the kitchen to see my mom by the window pointing at something below it on the wall. I could feel the left side of my chest beating as my heart was racing. It was a stain. “What is this?” she asked. “Umm… I don’t…. Um… I don’t know.” “It’s a stain. It smells like peas. Did… Did you dump them outside?” “No” “Don’t lie to me” “No” “You swear?” “Yes” “So if I go outside I won’t find them?” “Yes” “Okay” I felt a bit of relief that I got away with it. It was short last hoewer as I saw my mom putting on her coat and leaving. She came back a few minutes later. I can’t remember what I say first: the anger on her face, or grass and peas in her right glove. “You lied to me!” she said. With tears rolling down my face I cried “I’m sorry!” “Why would you lie” “I don’t know, it didn't taste good.” “I don’t care if it didn’t taste good! It’s healthy and you should if ate it.” “Okay!” “There are people out there begging to eat not only do you just toss it, but you lied to me about it.” “I’m sorry.” A tear rolled down her left eye as she said “I can’t believe you lied to me.” It took her a long time to forgive me. |
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