Reflection Paper

Most people do not hit rock bottom freshman year of high school when they are only fourteen years old. However, my experience was a little different. School, friends and peers, and love had an unhealthily strong influence on my adolescent development. External forces like these ruled my mental health and changed me for the worse. I gave power to things out of my grasp which changed the locus of control in my life drastically. From this period of my life, I learned many valuable lessons and have since adjusted my values to reflect them. I no longer live a life where control is out of reach and external factors determine my happiness. Thus, I am an entirely different person now than I was when I entered adolescence, and for this I am thankful.

Honors 103 presented me an intellectual challenge this semester; It certainly altered many of the expectations and assumptions about writing that I possessed prior to enrolling in the course. Throughout the semester, I wrote a strong paper that I was particularly proud of, in addition to a paper that I felt was weaker, and numerous papers in between. However, the weaker paper highlighted elements of writing that I will continue to refine moving forward. I actively participated in and regularly attended class, which helped me absorb the most amount of information as possible. I did many assignments and activities that were especially helpful, informative, and useful, although there were a few assignments that I would modify. This class addressed all the course objectives, and specifically helped me better understand and achieve several. Certain aspects of writing remain which I would like to learn more about, which goes hand in hand with the message that I took away from this course.

State the rationale for the task: First we are going to ask questions related to the task to engage the students. Then we are going to introduce the task and show them an example. Afterwards, we will do the task together as a class, and then I will let them do the task on their own. Once they finish the task, we will have the concluding thought.

Say: Today is a big day! We are going to write our individual page for our mini series. We are going to pull our information off our organizer to write our story like we did when we wrote our narratives earlier. Watch and listen to how I take the details I wrote in my organizer and turn it into a story about my tradition. I want to be sure I use details to help my readers get a picture in their mind about my tradition.

Over the course of the semester, I spent a wide variety of time working with high school students being trained for future employment through the program Project Search. Project Search is a program that serves high schoolers with significant intellectual and developmental disabilities, training them into possessing the skills to transition from the school system to the workforce. In the fall semester of 2017, five students from Blount County high schools who were interested in future employment took place in the program. Two students were female and three students were male. These students were in their last year of high school, around the age of twenty-one. Each individual had various abilities and skills that assisted them in building their skills for their future professions. The most observable skill was their ability to engage in social situations, which roughly ranged from having difficulty making eye contact to have little to no trouble in speaking. They also ranged in their abilities for a variety of other skills, such as staying in professional dress, completing work in a timely manner, and having a positive attitude during the workday. Over the course of the semester, I watched these students shape and develop their skills to prepare them for professional careers.

In our everyday lives, we tend to categorize people because of their race, culture, their socioeconomic status, and judge people by their looks, age, ability, and gender. When I was working at a daycare past summer of grade 9, I met one Chinese girl who was around 4-5 years old. One time I witness her classmates making fun of her because she has a asian accent when she talks in English, her eyes are small, her mom works at a restaurant with low pay. Even during break, I would always see her sitting in a corner all alone, while others were having fun. Therefore, I took the courage to talk to her. Throughout the conversation, I realized that she was mad at herself because she has a different race from others, language barrier between her and her classmates and she was ashamed of her mother working at a restaurant because other parents work at a higher pay occupation.

As we now know I’m currently earning ~$44,500, and in preparation for my review I did a little homework. According to my research, with my skills and knowledge, I should be earning more. I would like to discuss an increase in my compensation to reflect the effort I’ve put into this team and this company.

A Hindu spiritual teacher once shared, “This world is your best teacher. There is a lesson in everything. There is a lesson in each experience. Learn it and become wise” (Sivananda). When I take this wise advice and reflect on the past year, I see many lessons that have helped me become a more mature and responsible person. Many of these lessons have been through my English course with Mrs. Frohoff. In this class, we’ve had many units, such as the types of love, writing assignments, including many 1-page reflections, projects, such as a memoir and a PSA, and presentations on themes like identity and critical world problems. It has been through our memoir assignment, the large number of deadlines given, and the presentations required that I’ve been taught valuable lessons about who I am and how to grow as a person throughout this school year.

Imagine dreading an assignment so much that you don’t even want to start it but once you finish it you look back on the experience and realize it was good for you. That’s what happened to me during my Junior year of high school when I was assigned a paper that challenged me and grew me as a writer. This writing assignment was a seven to nine paged paper on my responsibilities to America. Because it was the first paper I wrote that was more than a couple pages, I struggled with making it long enough while still keeping it structured and well written. I also struggled with finding what I wanted to write about and how to express it clearly. Although this paper was difficult for me to write, it was a tremendous learning experience for me.

Writing is a tool that will be used throughout my lifetime. It is a tool that is worth taking the time to perfect because it will only be beneficial in the long run. On my writing assignments, I earn A’s, but I still have areas that I need to work on. The areas that I struggle the most would be with simple grammar errors such as the use of commas, writing with an active voice, and writing short,simple sentences. First of all, I often do not know where to place commas in my sentence. I struggle with this because I tend to add commas in the wrong place, so I have become confused with the proper use of commas. This is a small grammar error that I can easily correct by learning where and when commas are needed. I have also found and been told that I write in a passive voice when I should be using an active voice. This is a technique that I have to work on by practicing it and noticing the difference while I am writing and reading. Finally, I often write run on sentences or sentences that include unnecessary information. This makes my writing unclear and difficult for the reader to understand. I could improve by writing shorter and simpler sentences that include only the essential information to get my point across. I have noticed these mistakes in my writing and it has also been brought up by others, so I am currently working on improving it.

The process to become an effective teacher passes through knowing how to develop a course syllabus, while placing my students at the center. As a future instructor at a university, I have to think through what makes class interesting, clear, and understood by the students. My primary concern and focus are my students. After reading through most of this week’s assigned topics and carrying out my research on the internet and the Walden library, I am convinced that as a future instructor my approach, theories of teaching, and those who I will teach are the core when preparing a course description.

This summer has been quiet a busy time to say the least. Since I recently started a new job, I was unable to partner with an organization for my community engagement project. Instead, I worked with my neighbor, Betty, who is 78 years old woman who has recently transitioned home from a six week stay in a rehabilitation center due to a severe fall that prompted her stay. Betty was discharged after Medicare would no longer cover her stay at the rehabilitation center. When she returned home, she returned to home where her grandson stayed but could not relyed on. Betty was basically on her own at home, unable to walk, care for herself the way she was used to, and felt that her needs were not being met upon her return. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on how my personal involvement has been service oriented, helped her achieve her goal, and ¬¬¬to critically reflect on the integration this course has provided in carrying out this assignment.

Dr. Christine Weinberger is a Mohs surgeon who removed a Basal Cell Carcinoma from my mother’s face in 2014. Today, my mother has no concern about recurrence in the area and only has a discreet scar along the alar crease. Impressed by her doctor’s professionalism, bedside manor and extraordinary similarity in interests to mine, my mother urged me to reach out to her. When I did, she invited me into the clinic to observe her typical busy day of greeting patients, removing initial stages of their skin cancer, histological preparation, review of the slides, and then either further excision or closure. She performed over fifteen procedures eliminating people’s skin cancer that day. I left feeling the thrill of adrenaline and exhilaration, having discovered that I wanted to spend the rest of my life as physically and intellectually stimulated as I was that day. The next morning, I woke up to an email from Dr. Weinberger, informing that they had a job opening and would like me to apply. Soonafter, I arrived for my first day and during the initial orientation period I was immersed in literature and training in wound care, anatomy, wound healing, suture and staple removal, unna boot application (for chronic ulceration), surgical preparation, sterilization, identification of infection, biopsy procedure, clinical photography, gloving up to assist in surgery, UPTs, and EMR documentation. After mastering these skills, I became responsible for a full schedule of 15-20 postoperative

My mother does genology for my family so I know that I am mostly a mix of African, Native American and not enough European to really think about. I look like a normal African-American girl and most people I come in contact with assume the same thing. To define myself without race I would say I am invested in the betterment of other peoples lives and performing in front of an audience. As a black woman I am affected mostly in my major, theatre, because being black is a factor in whether or not I am cast in certain roles. Personally it has been a rollercoaster going to predominately white-schools and still finding a way to love and appreiciate my blackness. I’m reminded of my race daily when I have to mix my foundations to find a shade that isn’t offered or when my theatre professors suggest I do a monologue from “A Raisin in the Sun’ and as of recently when I look at the news I am affected by the fact that the injustice in the world based on race could happen to me or a loved one in a heartbeat.

“He’ll be alright, Mom. Honestly, nothing bad ever happens to us. I promise we’ll be okay,” I reassured her. The next day, October 1, 2015, my dad discovered the devastating news: his doctor diagnosed him with cancer. The doctor explained he has Multiple Myeloma, a blood cancer that eats away at the bones, and it is incurable. Suddenly, it felt as though we were one of those families in the Fox Chase Cancer Center commercials. Why is this happening to us? What did we do to deserve this? Nothing could prepare me for the constant overwhelming feeling of bewilderment.