1. What are you better at now than you were at the end of the previous academic year? Name all of the (course and general) ways that these improvements were made possible. 

I feel like one of the things that I have improved on the most is my ability to organize my time so that I have enough time for everything. This is something that I’ve learned through therapy. And this helped me understand how my brain works and how to deal with deadlines.

2.  What are you most proud of from the past academic year? Why does this make you proud?

Honestly, even though this is not the class that I have the best grade in, I am proud of the fact that I passed both of my pre-calc midterms. I took the first one on October 19th and the other one on November 23rd. I’m proud of this because it’s something that I wasn’t even close to achieving last semester.

3.  What went well this past academic year? What tools, supports or resources aided your success? 

Throughout the semester, many things went well. In my opinion, the thing that I succeeded the most at was my ability to study and make time for classes. I feel like the tool that helped me the most was using the blackboard calendar to always be aware of when assignments were due. and how long I have to study between the due assignments. For example, if I saw that an assignment was due around the same time as one of my exams, I would do it ahead of time so I would have time to study.

4. What did not go well this past academic year? What was missing that made this experience challenging or undesirable? 

Something that didn’t work well was my math. even though I was able to pass the exams. My grades on the exams were not the best; in one of them, I didn’t even get above 70. I feel like something that made this experience challenging was the fact that I am someone who is pretty bad at taking exams. Because of this, I would get nervous and forget most of the things I had studied. 

5. What insight did you gain about your own needs for mitigating challenges? Where or how can you fulfill these needs in the future?

In regard to mitigating challenges, one of the things that helped the most was being able to organize my schedule and my week. For example, when I was writing my essay for the sciences portion of the paper, something that helped me overcome my difficulty writing it was spreading the work over the weekend. This helped me take it slowly rather than stress myself about it. In the future, I can use this technique when I have to work on an assignment that I know will require me to spend a lot of time on it.

6. What did you learn from overcoming challenges? How will you remember what you learned and apply it when a similar issue arises?

I learned that I have to put my mental health into consideration too; for example, last semester, one of the main factors that led me to be stressed over my work was the fact that I would overwork because of my lack of organization. I’ve learned from those challenges that it is better if I take a nap or take a break instead of trying to solve a challenge with my mind all over the place. I will always remember this by trying to remember that I cannot make quality work when I am too stressed or too tired to work, and it is just better to take a break than to force myself. 

7. Who and what helped you to grow this year? 

Someone that really helped me grow this year was my therapist. She taught me the value of devoting time to myself and being able to organize not only my schedule but also my mind. and to answer “what” helped me this semester, I could use the resources from my professors. For example, when I was struggling to write my portion of the paper for science, I was struggling with the data and results part and something that helped me a lot with it was analyzing the other paper given to my professor. 

8. Who and what made getting to this point in the semester possible for you?

I feel like, besides my teacher, someone that really helped get me to this point in the semester is my friends, especially the ones that I met on writing for sciences and pre-calc courses. I feel like they really helped me focus on studying and working on my papers respectably. And to that end, I could thank my iPad, specifically the app Goodnotes, because, with this app, I could work on anything at any time. It also helped to have all my work in the same place.

9. What experiences are you grateful for? How can you acknowledge or express that gratitude?

Honesty, even though this semester felt very long and tedious, an experience that I am grateful for was being able to attend my acting class because acting is something I have always wanted to do but have never actually gotten the opportunity to do. and I feel like it was a great experience to see my skills. I can express my gratitude by thinking about all the good times that I had during the class. 

10. When did you feel happiest or most at ease this year? How can you experience those moments more frequently?

This semester, the most likely reason I felt happy was when I was able to spend time with my friends. I feel like I can experience these same feelings if I can make up the time to hang out with them both outside and inside of the campus. 

11. What moments are you proud of? What can you do to celebrate yourself? 

I feel like the most important moments that have made me the proudest of myself are when I was able to have fully productive weeks, which is to say, weeks where I was able to work on my assignments and keep my mind focused on school. I could celebrate myself by enjoying the winter break to its fullest. 

12. What new ideas, information, resources or research made a positive difference for you this year? What was helpful about these things? 

There were many new ideas that affected me positively this semester. The most meaningful ones are the ones that have to do with my mental health and the ability to control my stress by organizing every aspect of the week. This was tremendous because, unlike last semester, I was able to be as productive as I could be, and even in situations where I didn’t have the motivation to work on anything, I was able to overcome that by putting myself in a positive mindset.

Course-Specific Reflection:

1. How has your understanding of the meanings behind (and usefulness of) genre, medium, author’s intent, and audience changed? 

I feel like before this class, I never saw the importance of many of these aspects relating to articles. but after taking this class, I understand how important the genre and author’s intent are while reading or writing a paper. For example, now I know how the genre not only affects what is on the paper but also the way the author expresses their point. For example, you can’t write a philosophical paper that is mainly based on your own beliefs and a scientific paper that is mainly based on research the same way

1. What are you better at now than you were at the end of the previous academic year? Name all of the (course and general) ways that these improvements were made possible. 

I feel like one of the things that I have improved on the most is my ability to organize my time so that I have enough time for everything. This is something that I’ve learned through therapy. And this helped me understand how my brain works and how to deal with deadlines.

2.  What are you most proud of from the past academic year? Why does this make you proud?

Honestly, even though this is not the class that I have the best grade in, I am proud of the fact that I passed both of my pre-calc midterms. I took the first one on October 19th and the other one on November 23rd. I’m proud of this because it’s something that I wasn’t even close to achieving last semester.

3.  What went well this past academic year? What tools, supports or resources aided your success? 

Throughout the semester, many things went well. In my opinion, the thing that I succeeded the most at was my ability to study and make time for classes. I feel like the tool that helped me the most was using the blackboard calendar to always be aware of when assignments were due. and how long I have to study between the due assignments. For example, if I saw that an assignment was due around the same time as one of my exams, I would do it ahead of time so I would have time to study.

4. What did not go well this past academic year? What was missing that made this experience challenging or undesirable? 

Something that didn’t work well was my math. even though I was able to pass the exams. My grades on the exams were not the best; in one of them, I didn’t even get above 70. I feel like something that made this experience challenging was the fact that I am someone who is pretty bad at taking exams. Because of this, I would get nervous and forget most of the things I had studied. 

5. What insight did you gain about your own needs for mitigating challenges? Where or how can you fulfill these needs in the future?

In regard to mitigating challenges, one of the things that helped the most was being able to organize my schedule and my week. For example, when I was writing my essay for the sciences portion of the paper, something that helped me overcome my difficulty writing it was spreading the work over the weekend. This helped me take it slowly rather than stress myself about it. In the future, I can use this technique when I have to work on an assignment that I know will require me to spend a lot of time on it.

6. What did you learn from overcoming challenges? How will you remember what you learned and apply it when a similar issue arises?

I learned that I have to put my mental health into consideration too; for example, last semester, one of the main factors that led me to be stressed over my work was the fact that I would overwork because of my lack of organization. I’ve learned from those challenges that it is better if I take a nap or take a break instead of trying to solve a challenge with my mind all over the place. I will always remember this by trying to remember that I cannot make quality work when I am too stressed or too tired to work, and it is just better to take a break than to force myself. 

7. Who and what helped you to grow this year? 

Someone that really helped me grow this year was my therapist. She taught me the value of devoting time to myself and being able to organize not only my schedule but also my mind. and to answer “what” helped me this semester, I could use the resources from my professors. For example, when I was struggling to write my portion of the paper for science, I was struggling with the data and results part and something that helped me a lot with it was analyzing the other paper given to my professor. 

8. Who and what made getting to this point in the semester possible for you?

I feel like, besides my teacher, someone that really helped get me to this point in the semester is my friends, especially the ones that I met on writing for sciences and pre-calc courses. I feel like they really helped me focus on studying and working on my papers respectably. And to that end, I could thank my iPad, specifically the app Goodnotes, because, with this app, I could work on anything at any time. It also helped to have all my work in the same place.

9. What experiences are you grateful for? How can you acknowledge or express that gratitude?

Honesty, even though this semester felt very long and tedious, an experience that I am grateful for was being able to attend my acting class because acting is something I have always wanted to do but have never actually gotten the opportunity to do. and I feel like it was a great experience to see my skills. I can express my gratitude by thinking about all the good times that I had during the class. 

10. When did you feel happiest or most at ease this year? How can you experience those moments more frequently?

This semester, the most likely reason I felt happy was when I was able to spend time with my friends. I feel like I can experience these same feelings if I can make up the time to hang out with them both outside and inside of the campus. 

11. What moments are you proud of? What can you do to celebrate yourself? 

I feel like the most important moments that have made me the proudest of myself are when I was able to have fully productive weeks, which is to say, weeks where I was able to work on my assignments and keep my mind focused on school. I could celebrate myself by enjoying the winter break to its fullest. 

12. What new ideas, information, resources or research made a positive difference for you this year? What was helpful about these things? 

There were many new ideas that affected me positively this semester. The most meaningful ones are the ones that have to do with my mental health and my ability to control my stress by organizing every aspect of the week. This was tremendous because, unlike last semester, I was able to be as productive as I could be, and even in situations where I didn’t have the motivation to work on anything, I was able to overcome that by putting myself in a positive mindset.

Course Specific Reflection:

1. How has your understanding of the meanings behind (and usefulness of) genre, medium, author’s intent, and audience changed? 

I feel like before this class, I never saw the importance of many of these aspects relating to articles. but after taking this class, I understand how important the genre and author’s intent are while reading or writing a paper. For example, now I know how the genre not only affects what is on the paper but also the way the author expresses their point. For example, you can’t write a philosophical paper that is mainly based on your own beliefs and a scientific paper that is mainly based on research the same way. 

2. How has your understanding of how to navigate different writing situations/rhetorical situations (different genres to write in or audiences to write for etc.) changed?

I feel like my understanding of how to navigate different situations and rhetorical situations has improved a lot, considering the fact that before I took this class, I had never been exposed to writing research papers. But what I feel has changed the most is my ability to analyze other people’s work and be able to find and follow a structure that I can follow. This helped me a lot while writing my own research paper.

3. How has your writing process changed or evolved after this semester and how has the class affected this process?

I feel like, besides being able to analyze other people’s papers, another thing that evolved in my process of writing papers is my skill to organize my paper and sectioning it to make the work much easier to do. I feel like this class has affected the process of learning how to master that skill because I and my group were dealing with a very long and concise paper, especially compared to the papers I’ve done in the past. So being able to section it really helped us get it done in a more efficient way. 

4. You produced a work that had you create for a new audience: explain (using genre, medium, and audience understanding) how it was that effective for the audience you chose. 

I feel like the medium that we chose, which was comics, was the most effective medium we could have chosen considering that our main audience was teenagers between the ages of 12 and 17. I feel like, besides having the information compacted, which is the main idea of comics, this makes it easier to understand for anyone that reads it. but it also uses images that make the whole process of understanding and implementing those ideas more entertaining and digestible. Ultimately, I feel like this is what our audience wants: they want their information as straightforward and digestible as possible.

5. Knowing what you know now (from having taken this class) how would you approach a situation in the future in which you were asked to write in a new genre and for a new audience?

With the knowledge that I have obtained while taking this class, I will be well prepared for any situation where I have to write something for a new audience or use a new genre. I feel like the most effective way to get that done is to do some research on my new audience and find some papers that align with the new genre so I can find a structure that I can use in my own paper. These are two strategies that  I learned how to use while in this class.

6. How has your understanding of the research process-how it is and how it should be conducted-been affected by this course? And how might this help in the future?

while taking this course. I feel like my understanding of how research should be conducted has changed because in this class I had the ability to use different research methods like SpringerLink, which helped me narrow down the sources that I could use in my papers as compared to using Google. These types of websites make the process of researching much simpler and more straightforward while only having credible sources. I feel like this would help me in the future when I need to find credible sources for my assignments.

7. How has your ability to compose your own positions, arguments or stances been affected by the courses? 

I feel like my ability to compose my own positions, arguments, or stances has improved a lot. This is because during this class I learned how to make my position less biased and confrontational, which makes it more open for interpretation and more digestible. At the end of the day, you don’t want to read a paper that is clearly trying to convince you to believe a certain way; rather, you want to read something that can help you come up with your own ideas and concepts.