When I first started this class, I didn’t know what a Social Scientist was, let alone what they do, after a few weeks I began to understand what it’s like to be a Social Scientist. One of my best works is when I did a assignment called “Field Working and Subculture” because it describes what I love to do and the Subculture I Identify with, the reason why I think it’s one of my best writing is because that’s the starting point of where my writing skills really started to improve using more “precise language” to describe myself and what I love to do in my writing.
“You can call me a Gamer since I love playing video games. I do identify myself as one even though some of the games I play I’m not very good. I love playing co-op games with my friends even if I let them down we still have a good time and enjoy the fun. One ritual that me and my friends do is to talk about the characters in the game called “Dead by Daylight” and say how good looking the survivor is and how unbelievable the killers look because some of the killers don’t look like they’re physically fit to run around let alone carry a survivor over their shoulder.” (Tiana). This quote shows how much my writing has improved on run-on sentences and how I now break them down into smaller sentences all while describing my skills as a gamer along with my subculture in detail.
Another work I’m especially proud of is called “How I Read (Now)” because it expresses how much I’ve improved throughout this class and how it’s helped me become a better Social Scientist, reading and writing. “I also learned that in interviewing it’s great to not only get what the person’s response is but the environment and small details about the person along with where it’s taking place to describe to the reader reading, making them imagine what’s happening.” (Tiana). In the Free Write called “The Story Of My Name” it was the first ever Free Write our class ever did and it expresses how I feel and view myself, it’s also the way I happen to play the game Dead by Daylight, so Altruistic that I’d die for someone to get away, most of the time I die for Gilligan. “The story of my name Tiana was given to me by my mother who told me that my name Tiana means beautiful sky and when it’s translated in Chinese it means angel or heavenly sky.” (Tiana). I’ve improved so much by learning how to cite work properly in APA Format which is extremely helpful to me because in Psychology classes they expect you to cite papers in APA Format, before this class I only knew how to do MLA Format. My writing has improved so much, especially writing the Research Paper, The Research Paper I wrote is one of my most professional and proudest piece of work I did in this whole class, the Research paper alone shows me how much I’ve improved in my writing as a Social Scientist, gathering research in great detail and in reading picking and choose which articles that are appropriate to my subculture using trustworthy sources such as the CCNY Library Database. The deadline pressure didn’t really worry me because I had all the material already I just needed to put them all together in one collaborative piece, all the assignments I did really helped me when I wrote my paragraphs because I knew what to write about and how to do it, all the sources I used we’re mine so I just quoted myself and I also knew vaguely what I wanted to do when I present so I wasn’t really worried about it.
I’ve developed and engaged in collaborative and social aspects of the writing processes in this class by participating in our classes Fishbowls that gives me the opportunity to listen to other people’s opinions on the text and the topic that we’re studying. I’ve also learned important life skill strategies for reading, like skimming through long reading information to save time. That strategy has helped me a lot in college, especially when I read my US History books because sometimes they mention unimportant things that are not related to the topic. When I draft and edit I love to get feedback from others, so I know what to fix or work on. I love working in groups either it be a full group or just peer work. I like sharing my work and giving feedback back to my peers, but I mostly like receiving the comments back from them because they tell me more information of what I’m supposed to do. Before this class I’ve always thought that I didn’t need someone else to evaluate my work because they don’t understand what I’m talking about or the advice they do give me doesn’t help me at all, so I just never took any of their advice or feedback about what I should fix in my own papers. However, in this class the groups/peer works we do I actually like, because they don’t want me to make any changes to my work but instead give me helpful advice to make it clearer and more concise, more informational so I like hearing the advice they give me. The group/peer work has also made my perspective change on my topic as well because it seem so clear and well put to me that I wouldn’t know what confused them in the first place but after my group read my work and told me what they didn’t understand I improved my writing on the kind of language/specific terms I used in my paper so they could understand it better. Additionally, I learned/improved on using/accessing the CCNY Library to find reliable and trustworthy sources. I also learned about the meaning of “Precise” language in writing from multiple authors in the book Field Working Reading and Writing Research Fourth Edition, the Martin Luther King article, the poem about “Where I’m From”, the way we do FishBowls and Group/Peer work. Most importantly I’ve learned/improved on how to conduct interviews learning not only how to observe the person speaking but the environment around them and how it affects them unconsciously. Not to mention finding out which questions I should ask and which questions I shouldn’t. Overall, I’ve improved tremendously since I started this class and I’ll continue to use the knowledge throughout College and into my life beyond College.
References
The Story Of My Name
Field Working and Subculture
How I Read (Now)
