Reflection Paper

Fear and anxiety plagued my mind during this transition, however my wife and daughter kept my mind at ease. The information and instruction that was provided from the Professors at Durham Tech galvanized something deep within me. I began to strive for goals that I thought were unattainable as a naïve adolescent. Instructors encouraged me to work hard and to be persistent when it came to the immense obstacles of my course work such as giving a presentation at an honors symposium as an honors student. After countless years of self doubt and negative feelings towards education as a whole, for the first time in my life, I felt like college was an option for

Ever since I was a little girl my parents have been saving and preparing themselves for the day they send me off to college. I have a long line of family members that graduated from Southern University. I knew for a fact that Southern was going to be the school of my choice. August 22, 2012 was the first day of my freshman year in high school. Once I entered high school the only thing I could think about my graduation and my matriculation at Southern. I couldn’t think of anything more stressful than transitioning from high school to college. When I was in middle school a lot of people told me about high school and how it was hard. The things they told me made me think going to high school would be a huge step, well it has nothing on college. No more depending on people, I have to get it on my own. Now that I am in college, I will be faced with many challenges that I will have to make the right choice about on my own.

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.

Throughout my four years here at Blackfoot high school, I’ve changed a lot. I went through many different phases from my freshman to my senior year. My freshman year I remember thinking “I don’t need college,” “College isn’t for me,” “I’m not going to college,” Boy, was I wrong.

To begin with, college has always been one of those things that I have wanted and just needed to do. I was unsure for the longest of how, what, or when it would happen but I knew

College is something that most people fear, love, or choose to not even go. I never thought during high school, I would end up going to college and that it would of turned my life around. Everyone has the dark tunnels they have to go through before they eventually find that bright light at the end of the tunnel. I was going through that dark tunnel in high school and then college ended up pulling me out and saving me.

Transitions. The world we live in has many of them. Each of these transitions surround each our lives in different ways. A transition is a representation of a process or period of change from one state or condition to a different one. Growing up is an important transition, a transition in which we find ourselves and grow into the person we’re supposed to become. “College is such a unique time, because

My life has been one of constant motion like the ebb and flow of the ocean tide. My father’s military service meant that my family and I were nomads of the earth. We were shipped across the back and forth across the globe at the whim and will of the army. Assignment after assignment I packed my things without complaint and went to a new country, new home, new school to wherever I was told to go, but this year things changed. I finally had the freedom to choose where I wanted to be. My choice of college would signify a new chapter of my life and I would decide where it was going to start, and I could begin living it. I took my time; I visited different colleges but in the end, chose to remain close to my family who have been my main, and often only, support through life. When the

“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.

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.

For me, moving to a college campus bore a lot of similarities to moving to a different country. For starters, no one looked like me. Coming from a community with a large Hispanic population, I was accustomed to seeing people who were dark like me, who were short like me, who were dark haired like me, but in college I found myself surrounded by the complete opposite. Everyone was lighter, taller, and had lighter hair. While everyone else seemed to fit in with everyone else, I seemed to stick out like a sore thumb. The foreignness did not end there. Once I started interacting with my new community, I realized that we did not even speak the same language. Conversations revealed that everyone spoke in this other language that consisted of acronyms and Greek letters. This was a language I clearly did not understand. The longer I remained in these conversations, struggling to keep up, the more apparent it became that this information did not come from the orientation session the university made all freshmen attend. Rather, this information came from a different source: my classmates’ parents. Unlike me, my classmates came from households where getting a college education was the norm, not the exception. Their parents sent them off to college with a cheat sheet while all my parents had to offer me was a good luck card. Little by little and thanks to a little luck, I was eventually able to create my own cheat sheet and today, I can proudly say that I am fluent in college-speak.

There are 7 billion people living on this planet, and I can say that I have something in common with all of them. We have all faced challenges that have made us who we are today. For me, I have dealt with the challenge of my family’s coming to America when I was very young, with no English skills.My family and I come to the US from a refugee camp in Thailand when I was 10. My parents had fled Burma to the camp 14 years before and started their family there. I am the oldest of 6 kids - 4 of whom were born in the camp. As soon as we got on the plane, I could tell that our journey was going to be a challenge. My parents and I could not understand anything that was said, and I was confused by all the new and different food that we were served. When we finally arrived in Charlotte, NC after three days of traveling, nothing was familiar. Even the names of streets were different. I was terrified to start a new school. As it turned out, my first day was harder than I thought. I felt sad and alone and wanted to cry all day because I did not understand what my teachers or peers were saying. Every day I wanted badly to understand what other people were talking about. I spoke only Karen and Karenni at home and English was a very strange, weird, and difficult language to learn. I was placed in an ESL class but it was not very helpful and I was only able to take it for one year. I realized quickly that I would need to work hard outside of school to learn the English that I wanted to

     Last August, as a high school senior, I made a big transition in my life. Not only did I pack up my things and move to another city, I moved with the intention of acquiring higher education. I made the next step in my life by beginning college. High school life as I knew it was over, and my life would be new and different upon my arrival at school. My room, schedule, motivation, school life, money availability and parental influence has changed greatly.

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