1.

Based on the readings and discussion, do you think there is a significant difference between the
kind of writing that you did in high school and the kind of writing that is expected of you in college?
2. Describe your writing process.
3. Are you a member of more than one discourse communities? How do you navigate from one
discourse community to another given that some of them have different goals, conventions, etc.?
4. What are the roles of identity and culture in your discourse communities?

Personally, I don’t find that there is a significant difference in the kind of writing that was expected
from me in my previous high school compared to what is expected of me now. I was a HUMSS
student in the Ateneo Senior High School so writing, especially academic writing, was a skill that
teachers introduced and explained to us at the very start of my junior year, and was something that
we, as students, were expected to be adept in by the second semester of that year. Teachers would
often dread checking essays and written works of us HUMSS students because our works would be
so long and my fellow students and I would, in return, dread teachers’ attempts to make our works
more concise by setting a word count limit for written works.

My writing process does not have a good amount of structure in the early stages. I like to compare it
to how a sculptor would go about creating a sculpture in a sense. For written things I know will be
read by others, I tend to just write as much as my mind will allow me to; for a lack of a better term, I
tend to “brainfart” and just write down all the thoughts in my mind about a certain topic and just try
to flesh out whatever I have in my head- and that culmination of those raw thoughts put to paper
would be the while piece of raw material a sculptor would have to manipulate. Once my “brainfart”
session ends is when i start to look at what I have written and edit to add more structure to the piece
by adding, removing, rearranging, or rewording certain ideas or concepts in order to make the piece a
more cohesive and easier read for whoever will have to read it- and this would be the the sculptor
actually taking out certain pieces to flesh of the piece of art that is already within the source.

I would say that I am part of several discourse communities in the sense that I have more than 1
group of peers that I discuss different things with depending on who I am talking to. In each of those
groups, there are certain shared experiences we have that make up the bulk of our conversations on
a surface level. I would not say though that our bond comes from sharing similar goals, most
especially to the group with my closest friends. I would like to think we keep talking to each other
and sharing our points of view on certain things because of the fact that we are different. We
recognize that each individual has their own life and their own experiences outside the group and we
may disagree with each other on certain things but we still maintain a certain level of camaraderie. If
there were a goal that we shared among all our “meetings” across the different groups, I would say it
would be to challenge each other’s views and to have our views be challenged by others in a group
to come out of each interaction with a deeper understanding of both the other’s point of view and
our own. We bring our own identity and culture into the mix of our conversations because it is what
makes the conversation stimulating; what gives it more “flavor”. I believe that is the charm of UP as
an institution, if students are willing to partake in it. There are people from so many different places,
with so many stories of their own life experience, and most likely, views that do not completely
coincide with your own. The culture of UP stops its students from creating a bubble for themselves
where they only interact with people who have the exact same values as them. It encourages them
to interact with people they may or may not agree with all the time and that forces its students to
think deeply about their stances on certain things as opposed to stagnating in the weeds of sloth,
just interacting with people whom they already agree with. We appreciate each others’ differences
because that makes interactions with each other more meaningful.