Phase one made me realize more about writing and falling back in love with writing, I mainly like freewriting but I have trouble saying what I have on my mind. I’m timid because I was the smallest of my siblings and my friends but sooner or later I need to truly express myself. With me writing more I slowly become less and less reserved to speak up even though I have a completely different personality at cons where I like to embody my cos and be more cheerful with people who like the same stuff as I, that’s probably what I need to connect to others.

I didn’t use a notebook for class mainly because I didn’t pay attention and took it as a joke but when I started slipping I had to push myself and started to write everything down even minor details about the class. So if I have a habit of writing everything or when I don’t want to answer the question ‘conveniently’ take notes but it’s something I do. But overall you have been teaching well and making people move out of their comfort zones. I do want to mention something that blew my mind but I like SMT. It’s a game franchise where you use demons to battle demons and mostly end up killing god. Their side series persona does the same but uses more metaphorical elements such as retelling Greek mythology or using the gentlemen Theif Arsene Lupin as inspiration but the 4th game where it’s mainly a murder mystery does something I’ll never forget.

To get the cool anime superpower the characters themselves must face the thoughts and desires they deny and in a way conquer their ego to manifest a Persona which is the literal explanation by Carl Jung. Even a shadow an empty husk can overcome their ego to create a persona and spoilers on a 14-year-old game but the murderer is another persona user but unlike the player, he never faced himself but attained a persona, but he didn’t hang out with friends or had a job; fix broken marriages or help someone facing fulfillment issues but leading his hatred brew so the only warmth he would feel was his home village burning down.  A cool comparison that I have to truly express myself because that’s how you can create unbreakable bonds.

Phase 2 was very meaty, meaning right off the bat from phase 1 we were thrown into a more research-heavy topic because we were all given the choice to pick something that we could relate to being Pathos, Ethos, and Logos. I picked Amy Tang and James Baldwin pieces about English and why it is so complex. For these two writers, it became clear because of who they are and what they represent their English is much different compared to regular white suburban Americans.
It’s a small issue that grew into deeply rooting itself within Black, Hispanic, and Asian cultures that we have bad English, specifically the immigrants who came with nothing but the clothes on their backs and have to live in a new world where English is the dominant language. In my case how much my Father slaved away his body for an opportunity for me to learn and grow. Sad and while a lot of these immigrants know English; their version is much crooked and broken maybe because of what they watched or heard and thinking that’s how it should be spoken creating accents that shouldn’t be there. For Amy Tang it is her mother who is ridiculed for having an accent even after she worked so hard to come here and sacrificing so much for her daughter that made me pick up the piece but also how deeply rooted it is towards elitism With James Baldwin piece you learn how segregated Blacks and Whites were, and it went all the way down to their education limiting their and as a byproduct creating slang and what many know as a “Black” accent which can be seen as ghetto or unpolished.
So with language in my mind writing this paper was pretty nice and challenging and made sure I was right on the money with my thesis and my examples being clear. The professor was really clear and in a way it taught me things about finding academic resources which would be vital for other classes but also the big kahuna of a final so in the end, everyone was happy and it was a win-win for all of us and the phase went by quick and was there to prep us up for the final and the end of the semester

Phase 3, well it was something different compared to regular English and I had fun researching Drones and politics that are not often looked at. It was fun going in person learning about academic papers even while a majority of the class dropped or doesn’t bother to show up but learning about making our papers and more about English was a good reason to wake up early and show up to campus. My paper while late made me think more outside the box since I picked a topic that is super detailed and the information inside you can use to write whole books about but i limited to one section of the world on a certain time period to discuss about my topic and I wanted to be as academic I could but also not bore the reader because I am easy to bore and also easy to write boring text. But comparing Obama and Trump with some bias by Obama having 2 terms and dealing more about the war on terror compared to Trump who served 1 term and the age of radical islamic extermist was slowly dying off and the US would not intervene in such events just researching about it kept me up and made me want to perfect this paper. I know some kids were scared about peer reviewed and I was lucky that in my JWST class we did an academic paper and used the CCNY library Academic search to narrow down sources to peer reviewed and were also limited until the time of our birth to the present so finding sources was hard. Planning went smoothly with enough talks with the Professor I was able to narrow it down and a workshop with other classmates and get their opinion on my paper.

Crazy not a lot of people know I am a sophomore and were a little taken about my research and knowledge but wanted to make it clear about what I was arguing and if I was at all so I had to change it and even miss out on the deadline because for some reason when I submitted a draft to be reviewed I somehow put my classmates draft and did not get a personal review so I was in the blind before doing some more planning and trying to make it more academic but balancing my argument I was able to finish it after 4 days making it late but I know I could work with the professor more I just need to keep my work up and finish this class strong.

Overall it has been a crazy ride because I never really focused on viewing and most importantly seeing how I wrote. I was always self-conscious about it and in a way, I always tried to avoid it but regardless I had to confront it because if I didn’t in a way I would not grow and it’s important to look back. Plus I do want to publish something so it’s kinda ironic that I am scared of my work so besides the irony I had to toughen up and hear what people think about my work and honestly it wasn’t bad it was all good criticism and the talent was there. So I wasn’t hurt that much but hurt enough to push myself and hopefully improve my craft so with these 3 big projects in this class I was able to push my limits and see if I could handle new topics that I did not face in HS because of the environment or me being too scared to touch them.
It is funny that I need to grow and develop myself as a writer I recently went on a trip to California mostly LA and went around Hollywood and all the big spots and learned I have to take my opportunity to have many greats live in this state and their legacy continue on and in a way, it made me get serious on my novel and reaching out to a good friend over there who is a talented artist for making a free webcomic to promote my novel but also working with him on his eventual comic drop and maybe being an editor and co-writer to his mecha comic. He is a really big nerd about it and my time with him was fun but also at the same time a business proposal for the future. So after this class, I can have some confidence in my work and the future use my writings in my adult life.