Reflection Paper

As my first semester at Rosemont College is coming to an end soon, I would like to tell you how I got here and how will I stay here. While applying to college Rosemont was not first choice. It was on the bottom of my list. But when I came to visits and listened to what the tour guides were saying I thought Rosemont would be the place for me. The biggest problem, for me was I wanted to stay close to home. I have family at home that I really did not want to be away from, it was my first time being away from home. I know that being away from home would be a change for me, it was a hard decision to make but I made it! The first step of getting to Rosemont was applying into then coming to visit, after my first visit I was still uninterested into the school. The campus was dull and dry and I did not see any students walking around or any of them coming out of class. Shortly after Spring Break of 2017 I had to make a choice. I began to look at the bigger picture of why I wanted to go. While Rosemont was not a place that I wanted to come, but I knew that I would get all my work done and more. I was happy I made the decision I made, because I am staying focus getting all of my work done.

Process recordings have been very helpful in allowing me to see my strengths and areas that need improvement. It allows for me to check if I am using my competencies correctly and applying all the skills I have been thought. They also allow for feedback from my field supervisor so that I ensure the best services for my clients. I gain a better understanding of what I need to change about my approach and how to develop proper treatment goals with my clients. I get to put the knowledge I gained in all my classes to help a better understanding of the role of a social worker.

I believe that diversity is when one accepts and learns from someone who is different from them. Even though I came from a diverse background, I wasn’t expecting the kind of community I found at Kean University. People of all cultures and backgrounds came together to accomplish similar goals, which was to better their education.

For my service learning project I worked in Mrs. Evelyn Costa's first grade class at Meadowlane Elementary. Meadowlane is located at 4280 W 8th Avenue in Hialeah, Florida and was constructed in 1957. There are one thousand one hundred and seventy seven students enrolled at Meadowlane Elementary school. Meadowlane has fifty three classrooms and fourteen portables and there are one hundred and seventy nine students per grade level. The school was built on nine acres of land. The student population of meadowlane Elementary is comprised of 97% Hispanic, 2% White, and 1% Asian.

Over the course of the semester, there has been numerous amount of areas where I believe I have improved in comparison to high school. What has helped me in my writing is the writing class and the in-class writing workshop. The writing class that is located in the Kremen education building has helped me with my writing greatly because in the writing center the person in charge teach us lenses and we apply those lenses to the writing, draft, or reading that someone brings in. The in-class writing workshop has helped me because other students get to read my writing. This is helpful because I get feedback from many students and they let me know what needs to be fixed. A new tool I have been using is They Say I Say. The book is very helpful because of the information and examples it provides such as the templates. I have been applying the templates into my essays and I have seen a significant difference.

Ever since I started going to school, my parents always expected me to perform at an elevated level. Being the only child, it was difficult for me to fulfill their wishes. As I grew up, it became more challenging as I felt like I was always being compared to my cousins for not performing as well as them.

Sitting at my corner desk wrapping up yet another conference call with a prominent energy company at the number one Inbound Marketing agency in America, I swipe the tears from my eyes before anyone else can see. I don’t want this life anymore. I shuttered as I finally verbalized what had been building up the past few years but I was always too afraid or embarrassed to say - ‘The career I worked so hard for was the biggest regret of my life.’ My immediate thought is I cannot wait to get home and wash away this day with a book. My one reprieve in a day filled with angry clients, looming deadlines and office politics is to read. “The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails” (White, T. H. The Once And Future King. William Collins, Sons, 1958). Suddenly, a puzzle piece finally shifted into place - I’d read this book more than a few times, but this time the words resonated with me differently. The printed words hadn’t changed since I’d last read them, but I had. I wanted to be happy, continue to learn and teach others how to learn as well and on that axis, my world shifted.

As a type-A individual, I really do not like it when things do not go as they have been planned. Unfortunately, this has caused some additional stresses and anxieties in my life which I do not have much control over. As a double-major, it is so crucial to stay organized and have a schedule to stay organized and complete everything that is required of me. But, college can be stressful, but I think that I am handling it much better than I could have imagined. Throughout my educational experiences here during my second year at UConn, I have been able to handle stresses much better than I have previously in high school and especially throughout my freshman year. As I am writing this, I realized that by surrounding myself with individuals who I know are positive influences on me and planning time for myself, I am able to reduce stresses in my life.

“Through salvation our past has been forgiven, our present is given meaning, and our future is secured” -Rick Warren. Sunday, November 30, 2014 around 12:40 was a very special day for me. Life-changing you could say. This was a breaking of a new day to me. A fresh start and a very new beginning. This is a day that I never will forget. The day when my heart was spiritually opened and an opened invitation was held out to a certain someone. The day I was baptized in Jesus name. Baptism is a sacred event for Christians. It is considered an ordinance of Jesus Christ. It is a concept of being submerged under water to be considered ‘’saved’’. Being saved in other words is saved means that you are accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. He is now the center of your life. It means giving up yourself and doing the work of Christ. It means turning from anything that is against the will of the highest. The day I gave my life to Christ was very special to me because I learned a lot that day. I learned who I was, who I was in Christ, and what life after this meant for me.

Since the beginning of the semester, my writing has changed and evolved to accommodate and sustain longer essays. With longer essays, there is more room for in-depth analysis. Further analyzing a topic has led me to findings that I did not know existed. As I continue to write, I uncover addition and superior methods to approach my writing to the benefit of me and therefore, my audience. Throughout the semester, I have incorporated techniques to further my narrative throughout my writing.

I have made three salient contributions to the LGBTQ movement and LGBTQ rights. The most noteworthy, in my opinion, was my contribution to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). I was awarded a full scholarship to attend Stetson University and compete for the tennis team as a Division I athlete. During my tenure, I had noticed the discourse surrounding LGBTQ+ athletes had been minimally harmful. I was closeted for three out of the four years as an undergrad. In these years, I both witnessed and was regularly the target of disparaging remarks on the basis of character or perceived sexual orientation. These petty remarks, fueled by ignorance, started to accumulate and I increasingly grew aware of how these remarks became more hostile when the subject was at the intersection of race, gender expression, and sexuality.

In the tapestry of life, I’ve learned to be accustomed to people from diverse colors of race, textures of beliefs and patterns of culture. In every stage and in different settings, I have been surrounded by different threads of individuals with their unique life experiences. Each experience and relationship have women me into an expressive piece of fabric that rejects the narrowness of uniformity.

There I was, standing in the grounds of my school, bound by judgemental onlooking eyes, which studied me for a sign of vulnerability; begging for me to collapse into my self-fabricated darkness. Like a cowardly criminal, I slumped, trembling uncontrollably in the middle of the secluded balcony, where I implored myself to “stop” as I yet again had a crippling anxiety attack which incarcerated my whole body, though this time because my counsellor had called my parents regarding my suicidal ideation. It was punishing enough to wake up in the mornings, though faced with the constant internalization of emotions tore strips off my self-esteem. Tears filled my eyes like an overflowing river and cascaded down my face, though freezing in the silence. Proceeding to tell myself repetitively to “stop it”, as I refused to accept that mental illness was the corruptive reality of my life, I cowered as the flashbacks uncontrollably replayed in my mind. I recollected the words that any mother would dread to divulge to their child; that “sometimes I think that it would be better that you were gone, because then, you wouldn’t have to feel this pain”, contradicting this by expressing to me that “I know it’s selfish, but you can’t leave me”.

When I picked up the book Make the Impossible Possible by Bill Strickland, I could not help but form a negative opinion about it. I thought, “Great. Here is another book trying to tell me how to generically make my life better.” I looked up at Ms. Purser with a sneer and pessimistic thoughts running through my head. As soon as I began reading the first chapter, though, my opinion turned on its head. This was proving to be a book written from a real person’s perspective. Instead of cliché instructions on how to improve my life, I was reading the story of a man who came up in the ghetto, but changed his mentality and began leading a

When I was in 8th grade at Niu Valley Middle School my English teacher assigned a poem project and we had to record ourself reciting a poem that we made about nature. We also had to make a slideshow with pictures that represented what we were saying. The teacher, Ms. Fujimoto, assigned students two weeks to complete the project. During the first week after the project was given, every English class was dedicated to working on the poem project. Throughout this time I decided not to do anything and just go on my phone because I thought the project was very simple and would take little to no time to complete. I was also very tired and the room was like a sauna and it was boiling me until I was soaking with sweat. I vividly remember staring