Reflective Essay 2.0

The research paper was one of the hardest assignments when it came towards my rhetoric 105 class. However, even through many peer review sessions, questions towards the professors, and mental breakdowns, there are valuable lessons I have learned through the process of my research paper in which I will consider in the future.

When constructing a research paper I believe the hardest part is deciding what your topic is going to be and creating  research question from that topic. When the literature review was first introduced I had three topics that I wanted to do and was unsure of which one I wanted to do. When picking a topic, you have to pick something that is important to you and catches your interest, because when you’re at the point of writing your paper you get really uninterested. This causes your paper to end up kind of unfinished, in which a reader may tell when the writer has begun not caring for the topic. I did not want that to happen to me, therefore prior before meeting with my professor for our individual conference I made three list. Since I was considering three topics I wrote three list that contained personal knowledge of that topic. When I meet with my professor we talked about every topic I wanted to argue about and explained where I wanted to go with each topic. The conference definitely helped me narrow down what topic I wanted to do and made me very excited to explore through the use of research the amount of information I was going to learn.

When it came towards researching and finding primary research, such as academic text. I thought it was going to be the hardest thing in the whole process. However I made smart choices when it came towards finding sources, friends gave me websites where I was able to find scholarly sources that supported my topic. I even went to the main library at my University and asked about how may I get more information about my topic, they gave me resources such as the UGL website. At the end, I think I had too many sources and had to narrow them down because I needed to focus on which sources would help me with my research question.

Drafting and revising were probably the hardest thing to do throughout the whole research paper process. One thing that I appreciate incredibly is the feedback that my professor gave me after submitting my literature review. It showed me that I was not focusing enough on my research question and even that my research question was still bold. The feedback made me realized that some sources were not helping my research question to be answered, therefore made me to explore new sources. It made me consistently look at my work that at some point it gave me the idea to ask my friend to leave comments on my document where it helped find a lot of grammar mistakes. One of my biggest weakness when it comes towards writing is grammar, and being able to be corrected by others makes me feel good. Due to the fact that perhaps I would not have caught that mistake unless someone had to point out to me, so it is highly appreciated. At the end the research paper was something that I struggled through but ended up succeeding in my own way, it also taught me valuable lesson that I will carry forward.

Even through these hardships that I ended up overcoming, the research paper definitely taught me a lesson when working on future projects and assignments in my career. I think something big that I will carry forward is creating an outline prior to start writing any draft. The research paper definitely taught me how outlines are very important in general because they help you focus on the topic and not stray away from it. An example of this is when working with my major which is molecular and cellular biology, it’s important to make outlines when it comes towards that topic. Helps you understand the topic in deeper depth which ends us helping you when you are being tested on.

Something else that I learned and became valuable to me that will continue in my academic profession are peer reviews. I believe this process is the most helpful in any situation because it is able to show whether you are able to explain a certain topic to someone who has no idea of that topic. It doesn’t matter if these peer reviews were focused on rhetoric, I could also use this when discussion biological concepts, lab reports, math concepts, etc. It is always a good idea to have another peer look or understand your work before counting on perfecting it. Lastly perhaps handling feedback is something that I am going to start handling more serious in the future. A lot of the time your first draft is the not the most perfect thing ever and when you receive so much feedback on mistake or things you need to change you get bummed out. However, the feedback is helping you make a better version of whatever you already have, therefore taking into consideration the feedback given by my professor I was able to make my paper ten times stronger than the first draft.

The beginning process was very stressful and had the mindset that I just wanted to “get it done”. However this mindset change throughout the princess and I started to appreciate the choices I made and where they were taking me with my research paper. At the end I found things that were not helpful for me in high school, very helpful in college, such as peer review, outlines, etc.

Blog Post #7

1. Research Question: How does the college admission process differ for non-minority and minority students ?
2. Who I finally landed on interviewing is Sarah Watson, the director of the Illinois promise foundation at UIUC
3. Research interview Script:

• Intro to interview: My name is Darian Dorantes. I am a student in Rhetoric 105, and I am writing a paper about how the college admission process differs for non-minority and minority students. One of the components to this paper is an interview, and I will be asking you a few questions so I am able to support my research question. I believe you are an excellent choice for my interview  since illinois promise helps students who come from low-income communities.
  • Roughly, how many students apply to UIUC every year ?
  • What is the demographic of students that apply to UIUC ?
  • How many people are accepted to be apart of the illinois promise program ?
  • What are the requirements for someone to be in the illinois promise program ?
  • What is the demographic of the members in the illinois promise program ?
  • Do you consider UIUC to be a diverse place ?
  • How do you feel about the recent College scandal with celebrities buying their kids way into college ?
  • Do you believe that the college admission process differs for non-minority and minority students ?

– Outro: Thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate all the answers and information I received.

Blog Post #6

1. Who I might interview is probably someone who participates in the IConnect program at UIUC. IConnect is an innovative an innovative workshop that explores some of the foundational skills needed to collaborate, learn, and work in diverse environments during your years at Illinois and beyond. All first-year students will be required to attend one of these hour-long workshops, which are held in locations across campus from late January through early March. I-Connect is sponsored by the Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Relations within the Division of Student Affairs. I also wanted to interview someone who works in the office of undergraduate admissions.
2. This person might help me answer my research questions because it can give me an insight of how diverse our school is. Perhaps I would also get an idea of what people actually think about minorities in our campus.
3. Questions I would ask:
   1. Why do we actually have IConnect, something relatively new in the UIUC system ?
   2. Do you believe minority students have it easier than any other student ?

Blog Post #5

My research topic represents how beneficial it is to be a minority in college and the college process. One of the sources I am using is perhaps not an academic source however it really shows the background of my topic. The title of my source is called “Facts about race and college admission”. It provides a huge amount of valid information and statistics of how diverse colleges are nowadays. This article includes information such as forty-two percent of white students aged 18 to 24 were enrolled in college in 2013, compared to 34 percent of black and Hispanic students that age, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Enrollment in the 468 best-funded and most selective four-year institutions is 77 percent white, the Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce reports. Enrollment at the 3,250 lowest-funded community colleges and four-year universities is 43 percent black and Hispanic.

When it comes to Bizups BEAM reading I believe my source is both background and evidence. It provides the audience an idea of how race plays in nowadays in college. However, it still gives the readers statistics that come from credible sources to use to backup their own arguments. I believe I am going to use a lot of the fact based information to prove my audience how serious this problem is.

Critical Linguistic Autobiography (Revised)

Language is an art that is praised by many, loved by most, and used by all; in fact, we use language on a daily basis to communicate with those around us, training our mouths to form the same words in foreign tongues. We do this with one goal in mind: to learn and grow from one another with no ethnic boundaries or language limitations. This desire to lessen the gap between one another no matter where we are from has brought us together in a way that we have never seen in the past, and it is because of this art that we have learned tolerance. Spanish, French, Chinese, Hindi, and English are among the most popular languages spoken in recent decades, but these only scratch the surface of the art. Today, there are over 6,000 languages spoken worldwide, each tightly woven into the fabric of their history and cultures. In that way, every language is the same; they all bear the inherent weight of the ancestors who spoke them and the beliefs that they were recorded with. As a result, populations of people who speak dying languages fiercely clutch to their native tongues, for without their language there exists no true record of their history or culture.

Ignoring the weight that language carries so lightly in the breath of each word, it has more practical importance as well. Language helps us order our meals, receive our drivers licences, and buy our clothes. It allows us to say ‘thank you’ when someone does something kind, ‘I’m sorry’ when we do something wrong, and ‘be careful’ when we are worried. It is with language that we develop bonds that sometimes last a couple of seconds or even a few years, and it is with language that we express ourselves when everything else fails. However, nowadays it feels like language is restricted by our location, words silenced before they are spoken purely because they are said in a different tongue. I have spent my entire life seen as the minority, discriminated against because of my peoples language and hushed by those who do not understand it.

I am from Chicago, Illinois, one of the biggest cities in the country that is well known for a variety of things― one of which being its welcomed diversity. I grew up in a hispanic household, raised by two immigrants parents who came to the U.S when they were just teenagers. They were still learning English when I was born, so the first language I learned was Spanish. I learned quickly and could soon communicate with my parents, and until I went to school it was the only language I knew. I was placed in a bilingual class when starting my academic journey, and it was because of these first few years in Elementary school that I was able to be around others who spoke Spanish as well. Throughout the years, I watched an insane amount of Television and practiced my English with my classmates; this led to me quickly picking up English too. I believe these two factors― an encouraging household setting and a strong educational system― affected the use of my language being both Spanish and English as a I continued growing.

As a kid, my only memorable hardships were throwing tantrums because my parents would not buy me video games. I never really felt how cruel and judgemental people really are until I was in middle school, where we were taught how to write and speak “proper” English. Teachers would make us memorize the grammar rules, syntax, and how to use punctuations. Everything was introduced so quickly that I struggled a lot during middle school. To make it worse, each year we were given standardized tests by the education system to see if we learned anything, graded on our knowledge of the language and compared to others in the state and nation. While a lot of my classmates already knew these rules and just flew through the class with flying colors, I found the lessons difficult and stumbled through the tests. I tried to be like my peers, but it just did not make sense to me. My friends would even make fun of me because I did not know the difference between “you’re” and “your”, “there” or “their”. When I think about those moments today, I brush it off and just think it was stupid; however, for a 12 year old who had low self-esteem and just wanted to be like their friends, it was the worst time of their life. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I am the person I am today; I just wanted to be like everybody else in society.

I am a lower middle class, first-generation, homosexual, hispanic male. Just by reading that sentence, a lot of social identities can be picked up and a lot of them impact the way I use language. As a hispanic male living in Chicago, society demanded that I be bilingual. Code switching became a big part of my life, as I had to switch between both languages when I was in school and home. Code switching is very important because it helps you “fit” into the environment you are. For example, at home it would be very uncomfortable for me to speak English because my parents would not understand. This may relate to how my social economic class affects the use of language as well. I am from a side of Chicago where a lot of people fall into the lower middle class. We developed our own slang throughout the years, and we definitely sound different when we speak with someone who lives in the suburbs. Code switching also played into action when I came to college. This Chicago slang was something I needed to hide towards people who are from different places around the country/world. Right now it is very difficult for me to code switch since sometimes my slang actually comes out in random occasions, confusing the people around me. Nowadays, the media plays a big part of the kind of language I use.

All of these factors made me more of a conscious user of language because it made me realize the true value of language and its actual purpose. Where I am from, I learned the kind of language I have to use when I am at home compared to when I am talking to my professor. Where I am from, I learned the kinds of words I should not be using on the streets or online that might cause offence to others. Where I am from language has taught me so much, however there is still a lot of learning to do when it comes to language. Coming to the University of Illinois of Urbana Champaign I already learned so many things when it comes to language. Topics when it comes towards microaggression, racism, etc. However, there are still a lot of people on this campus that do not have sufficient knowledge about language, Therefore, I believe it is also my place to helps others realize the importance of language and how they should utilize it properly. This can be done by just correcting that person if they ever state anything inappropriate or not morality right to say in public. At the end of the day, there are always going to be people that will critic your language, that will argue with you. When dealing with people cirtixing you, it is best to not argue with them but just give them their own opinion because there are a lot of ignorant people.

Rationale

I would describe the composing process for this assignment very easy, because language is something that I have always struggled in. Language was something from a young age I was teased about and as I continued growing I kept on getting better and better. When this assignment was presented I instantly had so many ideas of how language has affected my life overall. The struggles I had, the insightful moments, flew through my brain as I created an outline of what I wanted to discussed in my autobiography.

What made me write about the topic you did was mostly to show how I grew as a person and to show how much I appreciate language. I believe discussing the hardships and the times where I felt like the world was against me would make the audience be able to relate. Life does not only have its good moments, there are a lot of bad moments. These bad moments are sometimes the most important because they help us grow and prosper into becoming someone we want to be.

Something I would do different for future iterations of this project would be to spend more time on this project. I believe I would’ve definitely spend more of my time outlining and typing what i wanted to say. When I reread my autobiography, I catched so many grammar errors and sentences that did not even make sense. I was really disappointed because it was something that I did not proofread, however now that I was able to revise it a lot of mistakes are gone. I would also ask for more feedback, even though the comments I received from my teacher were really good, I should of continued to ask others to add some feedback.

Blog Post #2 (Revised)

Similarities I see in terms of code switching is how in the The Hate U Give, Star attended a high school that contained an abundant amount of white people. She would code switch when she was at home and when she was at school. She did this because she did not want be judged by her fellow peers because of how “different” her English was. This reminds me of Tan’s “Mother Tongue” where she states, “This was understandable. Math is precise; there is only one correct answer. Whereas, for me at least, the answers on English tests were always a judgment call, a matter of opinion and personal experience”. Representing how there should not be only one way for people to be able to speak English compared when it comes to math. Every person comes from a different place and confront different experiences. These experiences may be discrimination, racism, microaggression, etc. Therefore, it is not right to restrict someone’s tongue by making them seem like they are not worthy to be in this country.

Baldwin also states that this is similar to The Hate U Give by stating, “Now, I do not know what white Americans would sound like if there had never been any black people in the United States, but they would not sound the way they sound”. The whole movie is based on the death of one of Starr’s friends, and the judgement that happens to Starr as she attends a primarily white school. She tries to express the idea that black people should not be oppressed now a days based on the way they talk. There are white people who sometimes do sound like “black people” and do not realize that they gain inspiration from them. Even though I have never dealt with the same situation as Starr did in the movie, I have had some experiences where I know how hard it is for her to be judged. In The Hate U Give, in the beginning Starr and her friend Khalil were stopped by the police. Starr with anxious and fear told Khalil to do everything the police officer told him to and to always have his hands exposed. This lead to the death of Khalil when he was holding a hair brush and was shot on sight. A similar experience happened to me a couple years ago when a police officer stopped my dad and I on our way back home. In this situation I acted like Starr and told my dad to do everything the police officer said. At some point the police officer made my dad get out the car and pinned him against the car. Accusing him of having any “drugs” or being “drunk”. It was such a horrible experience, seeing someone you love being attacked based on the color of his skin.

This movie really empowers all of the articles that we read and honestly gave me a new mindset. After watching the movie I have a new opinion about racism and language when it comes to our country.

Blog Post #4 (Revised)

I believe a big sponsor in my life and the lives of others are social influencers. Some of these social influencers are popular youtubers, James Charles, Jeffree Star, and Shane Dawson. Even though to others they don’t seem like sponsors of literacy, they very much are. They influence how millions of people use language, and create a new slang that people use in their everyday lives. Words like “sisters” and “snatched” have become used by millions of people on a everyday basis in many different forms as well. Whenever I am on social media there is always a post of both either of these artist. They have built such a high platform for themselves that they are looked up to by many of their fans all over the world. (Example such as social media, and in day to day speech) When it comes to my personal experience, a lot of the conversations I have with my friends include these phrases or ideas of these social influencers.

Literacy sponsors have the ability to influence those they sponsor and change the way others learn the skills of reading and writing. They are able to influence how people use their literacy skills and which literacy skills they learn in school or at home. There are many ways in which literacy sponsors accomplish this, they might be a part of their everyday life. Literacy sponsors would help someone greatly if they are around the individual very consistently. Literacy skills are learned and used, and influence the types of texts that are used in the lives of those who learn these skills.

Based on my explanation of a sponsor for literacy, it very much fits with social influencers nowadays. They give off this positive energy towards their fans, providing them with entertainment, and a new modern language. In a sense they make language more entertaining to use, to be able to have a good time with the people around you. Even though, the language is sometimes very informal it represents who the person using it is, and where they are influenced from. In exchange they gain a mass amount of followers in which may lead to becoming famous, gaining more and more fame. When someone gains more and more fame, you end up becoming more economically stable. There’s this equilibrium however when the people are happy and the person producing it is also happy.

Critical Linguistic Autobiography

Language is an art that is praised by many, we communicate through the use of language on an everyday basis. There are an abundant amount of Languages that are used today: Spanish, French, Italian, English, etc. People do not realize how important and valuable Language really is, it helps us order a meal, receive our driver license, receive directions and so many other things. However, nowadays it feels like Language is restricted based on the setting that we live in. It is hard to live in the U.S since majority of the people believe that the only Language that is acceptable here is English. We have over millions of people from around the world living in our country, bringing so much diversity and joy towards our country. These people are wanting to live the “American dream” but are ridiculed on the streets based on the language they speak. They are discouraged that their English is broken and instead should go back to their own country and never come back. When in fact most of the people back home are dying because they can not afford groceries to feed their families throughout the week. That’s how I lived my 18 years on this earth, seen as the minority, discriminated against because of my parents tongue.

I am from Chicago, Illinois, one of the biggest cities in the country. I grew up in a hispanic household by two immigrants parents who came to the U.S when they were just teenagers. Their English was not the greatest so the first language I learned as a child was Spanish. Teaching me Spanish was something easy for my parents, since they were able to communicate with me. Until I started school, the only language I knew was Spanish. Which was nothing bad since I was  placed in a bilingual class when starting my academic journey. The first years in elementary school I was in bilingual classes so it was an amazing feeling being around people that spoke Spanish as well. Throughout the years, I learned English very quickly. A lot of it came from watching an insane amount of Television, and from friends at school. I believe these two factors, household setting and the education system, affected the use of my language being both Spanish and English as a I continued growing.

As a kid I did not discover many hardships, apart from throwing tantrums because my parents would not buy me any video games. I never really felt how cruel and judgemental people really are until I was in middle school. At a young age we were taught how to write and speak “proper” English. Teachers would make us memorize the grammar rules, syntex, how to structure our sentences. We were given standardized test by the education system, to see if we actually knew our own language. It was something difficult for me, because it was never taught to me until middle school. A lot of my classmates already knew these rules and just flew through the class with flying colors. I could not say the same for me, I struggled so much trying to be like my other peers. My friends would make fun of me because I did not know the difference between “You’re” and “Your”, “There” or “Their”. When I think about those moments today, I just think it was stupid. However, for a 12 year old who had a low self-esteem it was the worst time of their life. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why I am the person I am today. I did not want to be different and I just wanted to be like everybody else in society.

I am apart of many social identities, I am a lower middle class first generation homosexual hispanic male. Just by reading that sentence, a lot of social identities can be picked up and alot of them impact the way I use language. As a hispanic male I don’t just speak one language, I speak two languages, making me bilingual. Code switching became something really big in my life. I had to switch between both languages when I was in school and home. Code switching is very important because it helps you “fit” in the environment you are. For example, at home it would be very uncomfortable for me to speak english because it is a language that my parents would not understand. This may relate to how my social economic class affects the use of language as well. I am from a side of Chicago where a lot of people fall into the lower middle class. We developed our own slang throughout the years, and we definitely sound different when we speak with someone who lives in the suburbs. Code switching also played into action when I came to college. This chicago slang was something I needed to hide towards people who are from different places around the country and world. Right now it is very difficult for me to code switch since sometimes my slang actually comes out in random occasions, confusing the people around me.

Nowadays, the media plays a big part of the kind of language I use. I am influenced by many “social influencers” online that create my own unique language. Influencers like James Charles, Antonio Garza, Jeffree Star, and Shane Dawson are people who contained millions of followers who influence society today.

All of these factors made me more of a conscious user of language because it made me realize the true value of language and its actual purpose. Where I am from, I learned the kind of language I have to use when I am at home compared to when I am talking to my professor. Where I am from, I learned the kinds of words I should not be using on the streets or online that might cause offence to others. Where I am from language has taught me so much, however there is still a lot of learning to do when it comes to language. Coming to the University of Illinois of Urbana Champaign I already learned so many things when it comes to language. Topics when it comes towards microaggression, racism, etc. However, there are still a lot of people on this campus that do not have sufficient knowledge about language, Therefore, I believe it is also my place to helps others realize the importance of language and how they should utilize it properly. At the end of the day, there are always going to be people that will critic your language, that will argue with you.

Blog Post #4

I believe a big sponsor in my life and the life of others are social influencers. Some of these social influencers are James Charles and Jeffree star. Even though for others they don’t seem like sponsors of literacy, they very much. They influence how millions of people use language, and create a new slang that people use in their everyday lives. Words like “sisters” and “snatched” have become used by millions of people on a everyday basis.

Literacy sponsors have the ability to influence those they sponsor and change the way others learn the skills of reading and writing, as illustrated in the example of Day. Literacy sponsors are able to influence how people use their literacy skills and which literacy skills they learn in school or at home. Which literacy skills are learned and used influences the what types of texts are used in the lives of those who learn those skills.

Based on my explanation of a sponsor for literacy, it very much fits with social influencers nowadays. They give off this positive energy towards their fans, giving them entertainment, a new language. In exchange they gain a mass amount of followers in which may lead to becoming famous, gaining more and more fame. When someone gains more and more fame, you end up becoming more economically stable. There’s this equilibrium however when the people are happy and the person producing it is also happy.

Blog Post #3

A piece of academic writing that I wrote in high school that I want to discuss is my final paper for my theory of knowledge class. We were given 6 questions and had to pick one of them, the one I discussed stated: “We know with confidence only when we know little; with knowledge doubt increases” (adapted from JW von Goethe). Discuss this statement with reference to two areas of knowledge. This topic was very difficult because it had to be 1500 words long which does not seem a lot. However, when writing the paper it really felt like forever because you sometimes end up forgetting what you are talking about. This relates to main idea in 1.5 (Writing mediates activity) because that whole essay we were able to express our thoughts about the quotes. Everyone has their own opinion so when it came towards the statement I had to discuss, there were so many interpretation I could of made. I believe the writing assignment had a lot of connections with other sections like 1.6 (Writing is not natural) since it is really not.