Reflection Letter

Welcome to my reflection letter. My name is Matthew Morrison, I grew up with three brothers, I have not been married, and I have a cat named Duncan, although Duncan is not really my cat. The year has gone by fast and I have learned some valuable lessons. One of those lessons being my inability to peer-edit a paper, and that, for the time being, it would be best only to edit things that nobody cares about, or at least things void of punctuation. I attend college to expand my knowledge of Math and Science and aspire to become a Chemical Engineer in the field of propulsion systems. Science is coming to a peak and when humanity can climb no higher we love to be extraordinary, and hope to play a part in our next technological leap forward. Beyond that I try and get outside as much as possible and explore the forests and mountains of Washington before I say goodbye to the endless rain and four short months spent in paradise.

Now, let move on to my thoughts about the class themes. Personally I could care less about discussing anything related to behavioral science or the ins and outs of a person’s identity. The qualities that make a person honorable do not differ from person to person, unless you happen to be a psychopath or sociopath. In the real world all good people are relatively the same, people just happen to act in certain ways due to the environments that surround them. In other words identity is something I despise discussing in any tone other than sarcasm. Community on the other hand is a band wagon that I would hitch a ride on any day of the week. Being alone is quite the pain in the ass and personally I would rather die then live out my days alone and without my friends. This made community the most enjoyable theme of the class and I actually felt some personal growth while writing about it. Tradition, I don’t have much to say about tradition besides that the definition still eludes me. The opportunity to write about technology was a plus and I enjoyed reading about the evolution of communication, which is what I wrote my tradition themed paper about.

The paper I choose to demonstrate my critical thinking skills was titled “What’s Your Status.” I believe that my analytical skills are represented clearly and passionately as I wrote about communications technology and the affect it has on current traditions. My interest in technology is what fueled my performance on this paper, and gave it the oomph and precision needed to critically analyze the subject. The paper I wrote for the Identity sections on the class needed the most revisions, so I took a page from that and fixed it up. A discussion board assignment titled “I Speak, Therefore I Am” is the voice and audience I will be using for my portfolio. I feel that the reading is able to understand how I feel about the subject while coming to their own newly found conclusions. The piece of writing that I personally thought to be my best was the paper written about community. What I wrote focused on my understanding of the friendships that I am apart and how they make me a stronger, better, and more productive person. I applied that concept to the entire world, but who knows if it is true. As I wrote that paper it made me realize just how important it is the maintain friendships and rekindle the ones that should have never been lost. For this reason I choose it for my “Writer’s Choice Piece.”

Critical Intro

The paper on traditions was my favorite paper to write. During this paper I was able to explore ideas that are relevant to the topic and interesting to me. In the paper I analyzed the influence that technology was having on society’s traditional means of communication. The section of my paper that I felt had the most flow while maintaining an analytic and critical view was, “As a result, cyberspace placed the power to communicate to billions of people world wide at the fingertips of every living person. Domains such as .com, .net, and .org house billions of web pages that act as the communication and information centers of the world. The tradition of communicating now exists on a much larger scale by evolving from hand delivered mail and newspapers to instant status updates and “tweets”.” I was able to show exactly how technology was effecting the individual and how it differed from past to present. While writing this paper I was able to personally gain a better understanding of the changing world and I believe my audience was able to as well.

Critical

            Santa’s sleigh is no longer powered by soft and cuddly reindeer, instead it soars through the night sky with anti-gravity technology and three giant rocket boosters. Traditions, like holidays, are the ideas, beliefs, and objects passed down by our ancestors and kept alive by the succeeding generations. Those traditions evolve, mutate, fade away, and are reborn again through the perception of each new generation. Advancements in technology have become the molding blocks of tradition, giving shape to their future and place within society. With the advancements made in communication’s technologies came a new world known as cyberspace, and it is here that the traditional means of communication changed forever.

            As a result, cyberspace placed the power to communicate to billions of people world wide at the fingertips of every living person. Domains such as .com, .net, and .org house billions of web pages that act as the communication and information centers of the world. The tradition of communicating now exists on a much larger scale by evolving from hand delivered mail and newspapers to instant status updates and “tweets”. The term “tweet” refers to each singular communication posted on the web site known as Twitter.com. It is here that upcoming generations share their personal feelings and ideas with anyone who wishes to follow their daily life. The revolution taking place in Egypt began with mass protests aimed at ousting former president Hosni Mubarak and ended up becoming a revolution of communication felt worldwide.

Revision Intro

            The first paper I wrote for English 101 had far too many grammatical errors and literally zero commas. In light of my inability to use commas I choose to revise and edit my Identity themed paper for the E-Portfolio. I have come to realize that commas are easy to use and simply cause a pause in voice. Learning this helped me to understand the true importance of punctuation and for that I am eternally grateful. 

Revision

Grealy may be capable of telling herself that the people who ridicule her are immature idiots but subconsciously she blames herself for the teasing. If Grealy’s parents had taught her a proper understanding of her situation and gave her the support to match, this may have turned out differently or at least allowed her to cope more easily. Whether it is low self- esteem, a lack of confidence, or anger problems, most issues with self-identity can be traced back to early childhood. These issues stem directly from an already-hindered identity of the parent. With that said, the effect parenting has on a person’s self-identity is quite significant and should be treated as such.

Consequently, students or people within the work place that are verbally abused, teased and bullied have damaged self-identities. We have all seen the effects of peer abuse on students throughout our school careers, and some of us have even experienced it firsthand. In the school system the abuse comes in every form, whether from groups of students to a single student the effect on the victim is always measurable. Throughout Grealy’s school career she was constantly ridiculed about her hair loss and the scaring on her face. The students would say things like “Hey girl, take off that monster mask---oops, she’s not wearing a mask!”(Grealy 66) and pretend to have interest in speaking with her only to end the conversation by saying, “You’re ugly” (Grealy 70). Without the barrage of negativity from her fellow students it is highly unlikely that Grealy’s identity would be damaged at all. Damaged self-identity seems to be a contagious disease within the school system. Already damaged identities pass on their self doubt and insecurities through abuse with no end in sight. Without an adequate system to protect those who are being abused and well rounded parents to teach their children how to be honorable, it seems that children will be scared until the end of time itself. 

Voice to the Audience Intro

Audience and voice are wonderful things to have in real life but in writing they are even better. I have decided to place all my chips on a discussion board assignment we did during the Identity theme. The assignment was based upon a story dealing with wild tongues and caring far too much about being different. I started out my writing assignment strong by letting my audiences know how little I cared about language by stating, “After reading that I began to think about my own personal connection to English and realized that I felt no connection to it what so ever. Language to me is simply a tool used to translate thoughts and ideas into something communicable.” Honestly, I felt that that the author of the story had most likely been scared as a child due to the abusive school system she was educated under. Knowing how I felt made me realize that other people must feel the same way. So, I wrote my paper in a voice that said caring about language is ridiculous. Thank you.

Voice to the Audience

“Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war?” After reading that I began to think about my own personal connection to English and realized that I felt no connection to it what so ever. Language to me is simply a tool used to translate thoughts and ideas into something communicable. I find that Anzaldua’s emotions are situational due to the fact that her language teachers were racist bigots. In a perfect world would you really mind losing your native tongue if it meant giving the entire world a common language? Should it not be the meaning behind the language that defines us and not the words themselves? In the end I feel sympathetic towards anyone growing up around people that don’t respect diversity and I choose to ignore their opinions in order to protect the concept of a universal language.

When I was a young-in I spent my days running through the woods, constructing dome forts and tunnels in large sticker bush groves. When summer came along the dome shaped rooms would dangle with hundred of black berries and we would feast till the sun disappeared behind the mountain tops. All those blackberries and endless hours of uninhibited thought left me believing that grammar was a pointless pain in my behind. Reading Anzaldua’s story made me realize that what language represented to her was what English grammar represented for me. My inability to spell is what gave my writing spunk and I did not wish to part with it. Instead of allowing Anzaldua to learn English while providing support to her native tongues they simply attempted to replace them with English. By respecting the diversity of her languages she may have been more receptive to their teaching. Learning how to speak with accent and without is possible and has been proven so by many actors and actresses of our generation.

            Talking and moving about while the dentist is working on your mouth is a horrible idea but does the dentist not have procedures in place to prevent such a situation? When Anzaldua’s dentist stated that he was going to need to do something about her tongue I was in complete agreement with him. Sitting back I tried to imagine a device that could be clamped to the inside of the bottom molars to keep the tongue away from the teeth and realized it already exists. The dentist should have been using a dental damn, the elastic green thing that brings any dental patient pure joy. The damn would not only restrain her tongue but keep those bits of metal from going into her mouth. Anzaldua may want to get referred to a dentist that understands his practice better and complains a little less.