My perception on what writing is and how it has evolved this semester has been the same. I see writing as an opportunity for everyone, it enable us to say things that make us unique in some way. Even though, the ideas or statements we write are not always original, it is still new because it is written by a completely different person. One idea can be perceived by all, and that connection between the writer and the audience is what drives us to write. Over the course of this semester, for all my papers, I focused mostly on how I should pitch my ideas to the readers. I wanted my intentions to be clear and straightforward but I also wanted them to be able to question my thoughts over the topic. Reading a piece is one connection, being curious and building questions is another. All the articles I have read, made me question the things they were saying and through that I was able improve my reading skills. I began reading like a writer, I was looking into the choices the author was making and began incorporating into my own writing. I saw the important role reading had in enhancing my writing ability. By reading a text correctly it makes us think how and why the writer chose to structure their ideas this way and how it affected us the readers.

All of my papers I began with a outline, and that was my way of drafting. I found making an outline for my papers were far more useful than writing a full draft because with an outline all my ideas are spread out accordingly. I broke down the requirements for the paper and began answering them shortly, so that I hit all the points, and made my goal clear to myself. For example, my metaphor paper, I began answering basic questions such as, “Does using militaristic language in medicine or adversarial language help patients and doctors?” And “The outcomes are victory and defeat, should we call terminal patients and their doctors losers?” etc. From this I was able to see where I belonged in this topic, I had a sense of idea on what to write about. After that I broke down the requirements of the paper, and began structuring. After I was done writing my paper, I put my outline side by side with my paper and started checking things off. When I was done with my paper, I read the paper again and asked myself who was my audience? What genre was I writing about? Did I meet my goal in proving my thesis? If I was unclear or was not satisfied I went back and added few more things. I realized when writing papers, keeping yourself in check is important because it makes the piece true and understandable.

During the discussions, I did not participate as much as I hoped to. However, when I did, I was able to engage with others and share a new insight on the topic. On a discussion regarding Dr. Ali Mattus video, on facebook causing trauma, I learned content operators have to see things that visually disturbing and it causes them to experience Vicarious trauma. I found that there are other professions who suffer from Vicarious trauma such as nurses. This made me think about my future, I saw my future occupation in a different perspective, thanks to the discussion, I was now aware of this dark truth. On the group project with Devon, Aaqila, and Liridona, we were struggling a lot with time management however, when sharing our thoughts about the topic and collaboratively working together we were able to work quickly and efficiently because we were clear on what we wanted to do. We independently did research on the same topic, then came together and shared what we discovered. Through that we were able to gather information that we all agreed upon and there were no debating or arguments. For this lab report using all the databases acquired from google, ccny library, and etc. was essential because we needed studies that were new, and gave us the information we needed. Not just for this assignment, but for the rhetorical analysis, I found the article using the CCNY library. On the rhetoric paper, I had to utilize the practice of evaluating the article so that I could use the main gist and points made to create a logical structure. This paper needed a lot of quoting and pharashing because I was analyzing the writers use of past information and its desired audience. Compared to the metaphor paper, for the rhetoric paper I avoided summarizing, so I could synthesize more.

During discussion everyone had a story about a incident that reflected how they felt about the article or a statement made by another peer. In my case I failed to share any because I was thought it would be out of context. However, It made me realize by sharing something even if it was out of context, it can be a source for another topic.