Fabiola Martínez Cruz L03

Reflection

During the course of ENGL4021 I have learned and even had to unlearn certain writing
processes. When I was in middle school, I had an English teacher that would make us do a type
free writing every morning, she would give us a word and we would have to at least make a small
paragraph using the word. I noticed that I always tend to not know what to write for certain
assignments and just have a difficult time starting to write them. So, when professor Le Compte
notified the class that we would be doing free writing I was actually glad, because I believe that
they help me and it kind of reminded me of simpler time. These free writing activities remined me
that one can just start writing and then later correct and modify one’s work. I am also relieved that
I got to learn how to do a resume. I had been trying to make one, but I did not know how to make
it look appealing since I do not have any actual experience in working at stores or restaurants, so
I hope learning this lands me an actual job. I feel like I learned a lot thought this course and not
only in the English writing part, where out of all the things I learned the most impactful one was
that you cannot use abbreviations like it’s and doesn’t, but also about things going on around us.
The documentaries on “The Future of Food” and “The Story of Stuff” really get you thinking about
this bubble that we live in. I had an idea of what the documentary of “The Story of Stuff” was
talking about but I did not know all of the information she talked about, especially the percentages
of how much resources the USA uses. I also had no idea about anything mentioned in “The Future
of Food”, yes, I knew who Monsanto was, but I had no idea they had impacted so many farmers
in such a bad way. I was really impressed with what this course had to offer since as mentioned
before I was expecting on just learning about writing. My favorite activity was the Progress Report,
I loved going up to “Finca Buena Vibra” and getting to help Rafael. It was great to hear his story
and learn about the production of coffee. It made me appreciate this whole agricultural
environment, I do not think I noticed how hard it must be to start producing your own coffee brand,
your own vegetables or your own fruits, the difficulties that these people must go through just to
start distributing their products. I loved it so much that I actually started going to Mayagüez with
my mom to a farm my grandfather used to own to start growing all types of plants, trees, and
flowers. I am also glad that we got to do the video presentations because I had no idea how to
record myself in Power Point. I knew you could and that you could record just your voice but I did
not know you could add a whole section of recording to Power Point so it would be easier to do.
About the course I think everyone should take it, it is so much more than just writing
technical documents. I expected this class to be similar to my other Spanish classes, especially to
“Gramática y Composición” and I was way off on the comparison. Even though I do not love
writing the way this class works the writing does not actually bother me. It was sometimes a lot of
work, but the projects and the assignment were always so different that they did not take their toll
on me. For example, the portfolio is a lot of work, but it is such a different dynamic that what I am
used to in other classes that it is kind of relaxing in some way.