Reflection Paper

There are multiple reasons I am where I am today and why I’m going where I’m going. I have struggled in school ever since I can remember but without the people that I have had in my life I wouldn’t where I am today. But as I will talk about the teacher have played a huge role in the reason I am able to be where I am today.

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.

“Writing an essay is not difficult! I am actually great at it.” This is a common statement that I would formally say, and even believe. In the past, I had never felt the need to thoroughly revise my essays before. In all my past essays, I would work intensely on my first draft and then just turn the essay in. I never spent too much time re-evaluating my writing decisions before turning it in. This process had worked well for myself in the past, and as a result, each essay I turned it would be an easy “A”. When I signed up for EN100 I figured that it would be just like the other easy English class that I have taken. I assumed that I would work on an essay, turn it in, and then earn an A on it, but this was not the case. When I signed up for EN100 I figured that I could continue my previous essay writing methods, but that was quickly disproven. When I received my first graded essay, I was unsure why I earned anything but an “A” on it. It soon became clear to me that I was going to be required to change the way I formerly wrote my essays and spend more time with correcting them.

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.

While I am always very open about my accomplishments there is one piece of me I don't boast around as an accomplishment. On Wednesday nights, every month, I teach a Rainbows class at First Assembly of God. This class consists of 10-15 preschoolers who want to learn about God. I teach because having an impact on someone’s life,especially someone younger than me, is important to me. This class has a great impact on both me and the kids who come through the program. I personally have gone through all five years of my church’s children’s program. I have taught the rainbows class for three or four years, which makes this year's class my fourth full year of teaching. I still have kids that come up to me getting so excited to tell “Ms. Brooklynn”what they have done since the last Wednesday I’d seen them. These encounters have validated the effect I can have on the kids who come through my class. However,the effect they’ve had on me is even greater. Before I had spent every Wednesday with these children, I didn’t know what I wanted to be, what I wanted to do with my life, and I wasn’t sure what my suture would hold. After realizing how much I loved children and how much I loved teaching them, I knew what I wanted to do. The children that I taught had such a strong connection and they know they have a steady figure in their life. I had a student whose home life wasn’t steady, and he had one steady figure in his life. When he first came to Rainbow’s class he was antisocial and

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.

Following the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, the IMF bailout provided desperately needed funds to revive South Korea’s economy but came with a caveat of strict mandates. The aftermath left sectors of its economy eviscerated, patches of its society dissolved and sent my family on a plane to the United States. What could have been a typical American dream narrative, however, not only molded my character but also evolved into a lifelong aspiration in global affairs.

Growing up church was not a place we “had time” to attend, and God was not a part of our household. It was not until about four years ago, that I began my relationship with Christ. On July 18, 2011, I began to have nine plus seizures a day; I spent a lot of time in the hospital trying to get answers to my over-night attacks. During this time, I fell into a depression because of the lack of answers. I felt that I was just being given drugs to get me discharged. Many would send prayers, and ask me to come to church, but it was not something I wanted to do. At this point in my life, I held anger in my heart; going to church and hearing about a God I did not know didn’t make sense. My mother was my primary care taker, and dealing with my sickness was not easy. In 2013, she was invited to church by a co-worker, and she took me along with her for the “ride”. We attended citylife church, and from the moment worship began, I was in tears. While the Pastor was speaking, it was like he was speaking directly to me, and I thought to myself, “He must know about why I am so depressed.” At the end of the service, the Pastor asked for those who would like to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior to come up, and I could not get there fast enough. This is where my journey with Christ began, and I learned that it was not the Pastor who was speaking to me on this day. God already knew I would be in attendance on this day, and I needed to hear the message that was given through the Pastor. I

This is my second year at Longwood. Before coming here, I attended Richard Bland College with the hopes of being a pediatric physical therapist. Throughout the years at Bland, the hopes of being a P.T. changed. I have had different career goals I wanted to be a juvenile probational officer and a social worker. I always knew I wanted to work with kids and be an important figure in their lives. I grew a liking to kids when I became an Aunt. I have two nieces and two nephews and over the years as I watch them get older I enjoyed being around them. Every time I attend a family gathering you could always find me hanging with the kids. It was much easier to be myself around them because of my personality. I consider myself as an energetic, silly, playful, and compassionate individual. My journey at Longwood has not been easy due to my academic situation, choosing a minor, and future.

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.

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.

Looking in the mirror at the actual physical presentation of myself, I investigated what other people view when they looked upon me. At that moment, I began to realize what the features are interpreted as. My hair is pulled up and tight, various people have suspected military, but I have never been enlisted. My glasses and crooked teeth would suggest that my parents were low income, no corrective surgery or braces for me. My body image would be identified, instantly by women, as having children and I do have two sons. After one eight-pound boy and the other almost ten-pound baby my body did not return to its original dimensions, there was no weight trainer or nutritionist for me. My calloused hands will tell anyone that I am a blue-collar worker and the ring on my left tells them that I am married. Progressing through college and beyond will be my way out of the shell that society has created me in, it will be my golden door to freedom.

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.

I’m a very academically driven student and have several, quite lofty, goals for my time here at Texas A&M. I want to maintain a 4.0 GPA, or at least a minimum of a 3.5 in order to maintain my Cornerstone Honors status. My dream, and biggest goal, is to intern for a congressperson in Washington DC, and I also want to study abroad, hopefully in England.

Many governesses before Maria considered the von Trapp children to be incorrigible. They hated the children for the mischief that they do and the children hated the governesses in return. Hate begets hate.