I Am Not A Scientist

One of the major accomplishments I have made in my recent years include my experience in my AP US History class which I took in my junior year. As an international student, I knew little about United History before, and I was not familiar with many terms used in the course. At the beginning, I struggled to get over the challenge from the language by reading the textbook as the teacher had required; meanwhile, I spent time looking up words I did not recognize. As the problem with language gradually got solved, another challenge came along—history essays. Writing in second language about a subject I’m not familiar was not easy at first. In order to overcome this, I frequently spent time reading essays written by eminent scholars. All my efforts

Throughout history, women were labeled as the inferior sex. It wasn’t until 1920—less than one hundred years ago—that women obtained the right to vote in the United States with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment (History, par. 11). In recent years, women have obtained much more respect than their ancestors, but sexism still runs rampant in various parts of the world. The social realm is not the only thing affected by male dominance; birth rates and population growth rates in countries such as India and China are also greatly altered by gender imbalance. Mara Hvistendahl provides information on the negative impact of global gender imbalance in her essay, Missing: 163 Missing Women. Alternatively, Kwame Anthony Appiah suggests in his

Based on Lessons for Women, women in the China were taught that they were unworthy, unsophisticated, unenlightened and by nature unintelligent. (Strayer

For this week’s journal, I was drawn to a reading about Document 9-3, Judith Sargent Murray’s articulate essay on the equality of sexes. I can’t help but relate to this disappointing issue that we have on equality. Being born in the Philippines, I saw first hand how male dominance still exist especially with my Filipino-Chinese family and friends. Men are given opportunities to go to the expensive school, offered to take a much intellectual course, have the opportunity to manage their own business with the help of their parents and so on. I witness how the women stay in the home especially in rural areas to finish just high school and parents will find a husband of their choice for their daughter to marry.

This past semester I have been taking English 219 which is formally known as essay composition and critical reading. In this class we have focussed mainly on analytical reading, writing summaries, and writing essays. Not only did we discuss how to successfully write an essay we also learned about different tools and techniques that can be used to help discover our position in regards to a topic and many different ways to overcome writers block. There have been many things that I feel I have learned in our English 219 class this semester. Even though I am very happy with the amount of learning I have completed I do still however have some areas that I need to focus on. I will be taking more English classes throughout my college and university education. In English 219 is has been confirmed that we will all have our own individual strengths, weaknesses, and ambitions for the future.

In present day it is easy for a person to take for granted what comes so simple to them. Women have not always been in the position in which they are seen as equals to men. In the course of the last decade, women have evolved as human beings through revolutions in the 1920’s, 1960’s and modern day era.

Students will get expected to complete a few significant essays throughout the class, including ones involving narration, description, processes, comparisons and contrasts, causes and effects, and argumentation.

Across many cultures today, patriarchy has framed the foundation of society. Although gender equality movements have improved human rights throughout the world, stigmas surrounding gender still prevail. In modern society, gender roles limit the success of women by preventing them from fulfilling their dreams and putting them at an economic disadvantage. Vietnamese gender roles have played an important role in preventing my mother from successfully living her life to its fullest potential up until this day. As a child of two Vietnamese immigrants, I was taught growing up that women had two jobs: be a subservient housewife and paint nails for a living.

When one compares villages like the Loushui village in soutwest China to the United States, one can notice cultural and societal differences between these places. While the United States is a patriarchal society, where the father is the head of the family, the villages are a matriarchal society The Mosuo women are believed to part of the last matriarchal society in China. Even as an agricultural society, women are out in the field working, but some stay inside to help with the children. Back in U. S’s agricultural times, the men did all the working while the women took care of the children and did all the household work. The Mosuo women do take care of the children in these societies, but the women’s family help as well. While in the United

A goal I have for myself in regards to this challenge, in this course and beyond, is to not get lost in the details and the wavering viewpoints and to find specific ideas and thoughts to focus on to help guide my papers to be more clear. I believe that I am a decent writer, but I can always get better and I believe learning how to focus on fewer points will make my essays stronger. But, with my skills now, I expect to clearly and successfully express my ideas to my professors and classmates through my papers and homework assignments. I hope, as my writing skills develop and progress, I will have a successful four years at Boston University and in my future

In the short semester this course happens to be, having assistance in deciphering what it means to be a wonderful writer is the goal. Along with this, I will have a clearer understanding on how to break down the information going into an essay; more importantly, this shall help essays flow together smoothly. Overall, it is thrilling to be able to take this course. Although, majoring in English remains to be something I am uninterested in. Thoughts of stepping into the dental field have come into play, but I happen to currently be undecided on what my plans are for after graduation. Attending a community college is more than likely the best bet. Interesting enough, during the school day generally I keep to myself, but I am an outgoing person.

This is challenging because I’m not used to writing anything over two pages. Although because of the page requirement I had to be more careful with my work and this made my papers better. I did think that because of the page requirement that my educational history narrative was my best work so far. What I would like to improve on this year is my style or flow of my papers. I think transition is hard to achieve in an essay and I think this class will help with my flow. Having flow is important because the reader can follow the paper better. Another goal that I have for this semester is to turn in assignments on time or early. I have seen that with my other classes I have a lot of coursework and I struggle to find time for my essay’s. I also find it challenging in my class with grammar, more along the lines of comma splicing. I think it’s hard to determine when I put a comma or not. One way to fix this is that when I write a paper I put the essay in “paperrater”, which helps with multiple things like comma

1. Compose a theoretically sound and conceptually rich essay that demonstrates knowledge of fundamental subject areas of a student’s academic discipline and specialization.

In this course, I learned a multitude of techniques to improve my essay and how to keep the readers attention. Furthermore, I learned how to incorporate academic journals and online articles to help make my essay stronger. Additionally, I learned that free-writing can help me start an essay and provides my brain a starting point for writing an essay. Free-writing allows me to write down as much information as possible so that I can help myself start off an essay with some sort of structure. The process in which my essay is created is to start free-writing, complete a rough draft, revise that draft with the help of my peers, and lastly, write my final draft.

I have learned many things throughout the course of the term, including such things as: how to write an essay and how to improve on essays that I have already written, how to locate and composite better research through the use of numerous resources found at the campus library, the internet, and the “Common Sense” textbook, how to cite research, examples, and quotations properly within the contents of my research paper as well as document it accurately according to MLA standards. Through the exploration of the “Subjects and Strategies” textbook, I have learned nine different methods used when writing an effective essay and how the different writing styles affect the overall theme and tone of the essay when used properly. This past