Compose Reflection Paper

It happened two years ago as I lay sprawled out on the floor of the library lounge at the Universite de Grenoble in Grenoble,

Ever since I can remember I’ve talked Spanish and English at home. My mom would talk to me in Spanish, my dad would speak to me in English, and once my sister and I were old enough to communicate, we spoke mainly English. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that I began to struggle with the Spanish language. I had taken Spanish 1-2 - which were levels 1 and 2 for Spanish speakers. At first, I believed the class would be an easy A, yet as the year flowed, I realized it wouldn’t be as easy as I had anticipated. Learning and perfecting a language wasn’t as easy as I believed. Due to my dedicated teachers, help from my parents, and assistance from friends, I became successful in the class I believed would be a breeze.

There are three words that keep me going every day, which are “Keep Moving Forward” these words are part of a classic quote by Walt Disney, which spawned the film Walt Disney’s Meet the Robinsons. These words were used as acts of comfort as throughout my schooling journey I often had myself wondering about the days before. I have conjured up to the conclusion that the past is series of ‘whys’ as in ‘why did this happen?’ and that people often dwell on their past and sometime attempt to re-create it. Throughout my schooling years I have often looked back and asked ‘why?’ as I tried to open the door into my bygone days and try to solve my question. It only so happened a week before graduating that I got a wakeup call onto the fact that I was opening all the wrong doors. Now I am opening a new door into the future creating new experiences and friendships. Throughout my last week of school, I sat in my English class 5 times, for 45 mins each, to reflect on how literature has shaped my values, attitudes and beliefs in my years of education and has shaped the person that I am today.

For the majority of my life, I have lived with just my mom and younger brother. Up until 2012, we gained an addition to our small family which was my great-grandpa and ever since then I have been taking care of my brother and great-grandpa almost every day while my mom goes to work. My mom depends on me to hold down the fort which consists of coming home after school, preparing dinner, and cleaning up the house. I also have to pick my brother up from school and on the weekends, take him to and from his bible class.

Going from 9th to 10th grade was a huge learning experience. At my school, Central High School, they had the 9th graders separated from the rest of the high schoolers. But that wasn’t my problem I had to go to a completely different school system, Russell County School system, they had all the grades combined. Russell County also wasn’t very known for a good curriculum. Central’s curriculum was more advanced than them. I learned how to transition from doing the minimum work needed to have to go above and beyond for my school work. High school I was able to learn many things, but the most important was learning to properly read and write.

I used to not think this to be true, but once it happened in my life, I became a strong believer in it. I would hear, “Sometimes you have to let things go, so there’s room for better things to come into your life.” I convinced myself to think that this was just a phrase people told themselves and others to make one another believe that life would get better. It wasn’t until one day that I believed it too.

Before this summer we were still in high school, thinking about where we were going to be for the next four years of our lives. About what we were going to study and what we want to do for the rest of our lives. Now I am just thinking back to everything I learned over the years, it was all just teachers pushing a lot of information into our heads trying to make us memorize everything we needed to know. There were only a select few that really tried to teach us and not just ram information into us. I remember my sophomore year in high school my English teacher was also the coach for most of the school’s sports. Even though he had so much to think about he still took the time to try and make us learn in an unique way. Instead of having us write essays about things we did not want to read he would make us debate. Everyone would get excited because why not put something teens like doing with something they do not like doing. Arguing, something they liked doing, and English, something that most did not like to do. We sat through a lot of pointless class periods that we thought we were not going to learn anything from. But now I realize that what they were saying was important. They each had their own way to teach but all were teaching the same thing to some extent. Now we have to face the adjustments between high school writing and college writing and also everything else it brings to our plates.

This first semester has flown by, and I haven’t had the chance to really process all I’ve done. Looking back on the beginning of the semester to now, it’s weird to see how much I grew as a person.

I am a Nigerian who recently became an American citizen, and I am rooted in my African culture, where it is the responsibility of young adults in the community to care for the young and the elderly. At age 9, I fell sick with typhoid fever and was in a coma for two days. Had it not been for the nurses and doctors who took good care of me, I would not have overcome the sickness. For many reasons, then, it is perhaps not surprising that, when my family and I moved to the United States eight years ago, I found myself drawn to the work of providing care and support to others. In Nigeria, because there is a small number of “child-care systems” and no “homes for the dying,” everyone’s home is open for those who need care, and it is simply a way of life. This way of life continued when my family and I moved to the U.S. and we joined a community of relatives and neighbors, who practiced a similar culture, and this compassionate spirit continued for me in many forms.

We did our facilitation about rice commodity in three different countries and I must say, it was good working with my team members. Rice production is one of the most important aspects to the food supply of different countries, I chose China and because China was the number one rice producing country, I thought this was really interesting. Working together in a group is not always fun, but with the right people working with you, it will be easy. My team members for this facilitation were great, which made me enjoy working with them. As soon as we knew who was in the group, we decided to exchange contact information like emails and made a Google doc to share the ideas. But the weakness would be due to the different schedules because we all came up with the idea on the internet and we only met once before the class time on facilitation day. Also, one thing that we could improve from the peer feedback was that we were not that cooperative, and we had too much information. I think that is because we only decided to work together to come up with the format of the facilitation and who should do what. There was not a group leader per-se.

Last Friday, classes were cancelled, the Honors College closed early and professors moved their office hours to accommodate the football game. It may seem contradictory for a University to make this move. However, the UA is not just a school, but a community. That is what makes this school so special.

At this moment there are currently 7,430,931,842 people in the world. Nearly 3 billion of those people are currently living in poverty. Today, 350,000 babies will be born. The world, continues to grow, to prosper, as I sit in my bedroom staring out the window waiting for creativity to strike and give me the words that so effortlessly describe me. There is currently only one person in the world with the name Gabrielle Vozzi, and right now she is attempting to describe something that is indescribable: herself.

The other thing I completely understood was that I loved teaching and working in a classroom. Unfortunately, it would take a lot longer to get back into one than I had originally planned.

In my past years of education I have been involved in many classes, but I had never taken a summer class until this semester in college. In elementary school, middle, and high school, I did not take summer school either. This semester in college, it was necessary for me to catch up on my studies and attend this English class as a requirement for other classes that I also intend to take, therefore I decided to enroll in a summer class to help me catch up with the mandatory classes for my nursing degree. I have been lucky to have chosen a great class with a very helpful teacher who has taught me so much. In this course we wrote four major essays, a narrative, an argument, a report essay and an analysis. I learned many things from the essays

Do you ever wish you could click the reset button many times in your life? It might’ve been something you wish you could’ve changed, but you can’t and now you’re faced with that setback/regret.