Reflection Essay

The first smart goals I chose are to learn to become a leader and to have better time management skills. I chose these because I work on a small unit with no assigned charge nurse. Any day you go in to work it could be your day to be charge nurse so everyone on the unit needs to be able to step up and be a leader. Time management is a skill that every nurse needs to learn. In my opinion, if you have good time management skills it can decrease your stress level and make your workday more organized and enjoyable.

As a 14 year old reader and writer, I never saw a true significance in the subjects. I would often become flustered and overwhelmed when forced to do a writing assignment. I just couldn’t understand why I was being forced to perform a task that, in my opinion, made no impact on the world around me. However, my Sophomore year, my perception began to change. I had begun taking an Advanced Placement World History class. This class made a big impact on me as a reader and a writer for many reasons. Although, I can’t recall every lesson I was taught during the course of this class, but what I can recall is a much more impactful lesson. The lesson that continues to shape how I view literacy and the modern world.

One aim I remember well is “Why do we prefer to see segregation as natural, or unplanned?” as I was the one who helped pick it. You gave me a choice between this question and “do we prefer to see segregation as natural, or unnatural?” (something like that), and I picked the former because I knew it better prompted the way you like to guide your lessons. I didn’t think you wanted a debate on whether segregation is planned or not, but rather a discuss on how calculated the racism in our nation is. When you asked the class about the aim, I remember there being silence. Even I was uncomfortable answering because Americans have a tendency to not want to accept their faults. It’s in our textbooks, our curriculum, and our daily lives. Every single history teacher I’ve ever had remained very neutral to the information they taught (which I don’t blame them for most teachers are expected to not share opinions), but you did not care and I loved that!! I feel like I never had the weight of how cruel and deliberate our history of racism was really drop on me until I was in your class. Americans passed segregation off as a natural process because we knew it was wrong, and did nothing about it, but we did not want to feel bad about ourselves and accept what a backwards society we created. It’s such a simple concept, but for some reason, it didn’t hit me hard until then.

Every person on this earth has a past that shapes them and makes them into a unique individual. I am a 19-year-old student who has a life that may seem to have little flaws from the view of an outsider, but in all honesty been a journey of difficult ups and downs. I have found that many of the readings we are required to do in university will not personally touch us or make us reflect deeply on our own lives. This certainly was not the cas e when I read the personal essay titled Ghosts and Voices: Writing from Obsession by Sarah Cisneros’, because I found that I connected on a deeply personal level to three principal aspects of this piece of writing. First of all, I was also ostracised as a younger child, but in a school setting not at home. In those difficult years when I felt like I had no one, I escaped into the worlds created in books and through trying to write my own stories. Secondly, like Cisneros’, I found myself deeply connecting with some of the books I was reading and in them found the girl that I wanted to become. Lastly, this entire piece was how Cisneros’ discovered her voice as a writer. She found that the best way was to write what you know best, basically using your own experiences to draw your readers/audience in, which is also something I am well versed in not only as a writer but also a performing musician. I truly connected with this piece by Cisneros and was able to find many key parallels between our personal lives that really struck a chord with me.

Early in my second year at Laurentian University’s McEwen School of Architecture, I was dealing with a very severe illness. Along with navigating the everyday stress of my second-year program I was also dealing with severe anxiety and depression. I was unable to attend any classes due to anxiety attacks and a constant fear of them hitting me at anytime. This was my third year spent away from home and due to my constant fear of an attack I didn’t feel safe anywhere I went. Thanks to the help of my professors and friends I was able to start to get back on track towards bettering myself. The previous Director of my program, Terrance Gavin, allowed me to withdraw from the program to finally seek medical aid. He gave me the opportunity to better my health before returning to school. Thanks to his support I started to seek counselling along with working on making my own health better. I made a routine for myself, I started to eat healthier and go for daily walks. Since the year ended I believe I have made a dramatic improvement towards my health. I am able to wake up early in the morning and successfully accomplish my daily tasks without feeling anxious and depressed. I also try to visit home on a bi-weekly basis as living so far from my home has also effected my health. I have attached a doctor’s note to this document for verification.

When I go into any class, with a weak memory and an developing intuition, I do not orient my success on remembering a lot of pointless information, but learning the art of independent thought. I never imagined, however, I could acquire some of these useful skills through the course Writing 1. Mrs Tocco, you have helped me to develop many of my lacking English skills, such as grammar, punctuation, and how to clearly portray ideas. There is a clear difference in my grammar capabilities. In my first paper, English Nightmare, I had many errors in my paper, from writing to grammar, one of them being, “This is also coming from a Boy Scout who was trained to follow orders and always be honest (for me it's every other situation.)”(Witt 4). This was one of my first quotes and a classical errors in writing. As you well know, I put the period inside the parenthesis, which is incorrect. When I started this course, I was oblivious to things like this and other rules in effective writing like do not use apostrophes, how to block quote, and refrain from using first person in many situations. My editing was my biggest improvement over the semester, but this is broken down into multiple topics.

In my English classes, a popular assignment is analyzing the literature in an essay after reading a novel. You may think that because I had this assignment multiple times already, that I would be good at it by now. I should definitely be able to write it without any hesitation or problem. However, that is not the case, unfortunately. When analyzing literature, I still have a long way to go. I still have a lot of techniques and ways to pick up that would help make my writing more efficient. My brain is definitely still developing new strategies that could come in handy when writing. Although sometimes I believe that I am alright at analyzing literature, I do often times have writer’s block and can not seem to come up with an analyzation. Thankfully, due to my most recent English teacher, I had a lot of help and improved myself greatly. I feel confident in the quotes that I pick, confident in the commentary I am writing, and confident in the way I phrase it. I have developed my own techniques as to analyzing literature in order to write an essay along the way.

In this class we have a credo, and in that credo there are some key words that were capitalized: Read, Think, Write, College Level, rigorously, Holistically, Learning, Safe, and Fun. Everyone has their own way of defining words, some maybe the same and some may be different but that’s ok. In this essay I am going to thoroughly and efficiently explain to you in my own words what each of these words mean to me in the context of this course.

For the past three and a half years I have participated in the school band. In that time I’ve taken part in concert band, marching band, and jazz band. Setting up my schedule in sixth grade kicked off the adventure.

Though there was an impressive amount of points and ideas which I will touch on in a few sentences which I appreciated from JD Vance's lecture, what made me willing to listen, swallow and immerse myself in what he was saying was the fact that he pointed out that while there are going to be differences in culture, in opinion, in almost anything there can be differences in… what’s important, what’s an essential part of trying to fix America and restore people’s hope in the American dream is to come at problems and dilemmas from the other side, with a new perspective.

There are many lessons I learned in a little over a year. June 24, 2016, I remember standing on the stage at CSU when the old district president gave her words of wisdom to me and I received the district flag. Our first event as an officer team we elected the secretary, treasurer, and parliamentarian. When Sarah, the old district president, stood up to nominate me for Parliamentarian I looked at her like she was crazy. I never thought that I would get the spot until they announced my name as the new parliamentarian. As a new team, we went to New Mexico as a new team and I met some people that are fun but I never thought they would become my best friends. I remember thinking that they were some of the best when we were sitting around telling embarrassing stories and Kyle, The State president, told his most embarrassing and everyone else just laughed. When we said goodbye it was hugs, tears and until next times.

As I sit here and write this literacy narrative, I reflect on a time in eighth grade when I read a book regrading civil injustice. Back then I wouldn’t have thought to use such fancy words. Instead, something along the lines of “a black boy my age got killed for whistling at a woman! And the murderers didn’t even get in trouble.” So much confusion was attached with my not so politically correct summary of the book. In fact, we read this book in the upmost politically correct way as possible. Derogatory terms such as negro, nigger, and colored was to be renamed and replaced by the word African American. Simple. Nothing too hard to do in eighth grade just switch a word or two around. But how ironic we didn’t go over any set “rules” for the white character’s. No negative connotation related to the word “white” at all. In fact, when we had class discussions for this book it was normal to say “Hiram the white boy went to visit his grandfather in Mississippi.” But if I was to talk about Emmett Till, African American would always be attached to his name. I can admit just like any other person in that class it was weird but we never put too much thought behind it. Just abided by the rules and read.

I believe that existence is dependent on connections. Life only exists in ecosystems where energies are undoubtedly interrelated but I think as humans we often overlook the significant beauty of our ecosystem. I’ve learned that the three most important types of connections we make are relationships with other beings, the understanding of ourselves, and deep ties to our natural surroundings. Without these connections, life cannot be. In my experience, I’ve seen how art and creativity develop a language through which connections can be made.

I  was part of the crew of a 688 class attack boats (USS Bremerton). When I was first assigned to the Bremerton, my life consisted of learning everything I could about the boat and all of its systems so I could earn my "dolphins" and be a real member of the crew. You were viewed as a non useful body when you first report for duty. you litterly can take the past 1 year of training and throw it out the window. little of what was tought in Sub School really prepared you for what was about to become your reality.

Being accepted into May’s Business School this past May, I started to think forward to all the exciting job opportunities and different career paths that I could explore. Through the guest speakers and seminar sessions, I have grown to understand the steps needed to succeed in our evolving job market. By enabling myself to take this course I have learned many professional lessons which include; the value networking can have on your job placement, interview preparation, and how ethical behavior in the workplace can affect your performance.