Blog Reflection

Creating my own blog was really a unique experience. It was my first time creating one,  so at first I didn't know what to do. Once I learned how to do it, I enjoyed the experience of creating it. It felt kind of nice to have a “website” that gives people an insight of who I am.  What I loved the most was that you can literary edit everything and that made the whole experience even better, because you could design your blog your own way. For instance, in my blog I added some quotes from MLK and Malcolm X; and adding quotes is just one of the many things that you can do. When the blog was assigned I thought that it was useless. I thought the same  about the journal, but the blog felt different than the journal. It was like a reflection of all the practice that I gained from the journal.

In the journal we wrote about our feelings and thoughts. In the blog we posted reflections of works, readings, experiences, etc. The blog, in my opinion, is more of a summary of the improvement you have gained writing the journal entries. I say this, because in the blog we post our best reflections and best works, meaning that our writing skills were great. After completing the blog, I realize that thanks to it I could now see how much I've grown as a person and how much my writing skills have improved over time. My thoughts have been refined allowing me to express my personality, and at the same time overcome my fear of writing.

Works Cited:

Pittmann, Cynthia. Blog reflection by Batista, Gian. Class assignment UPRRP February 12 2018.

The Transformation of Education: Education Interview

Interviewer: Gian Batista

Interviewee: Auria Pérez

Question #1: Did you enjoyed studying from a young age? Why?

Answer: “ Yes, because by studying and gathering lots of knowledge I was preparing myself for the adult life. ”

Question #2: How accessible was education during your time?

Answer: “It was accessible as it is today, thanks to the public system, but like most colleges you needed to have necessary requirements to enter a college.”

Question #3: How was the education system back then?

Answer: “It was good in context of my time; it prepared you really good. Maybe somethings have change but the general function is still the same.”

Question #4: What peak your interest in college?

Answer: “Math has always been my favorite subject, that is why I work at Centro de Computos.”

Question #5: Was education as important and necessary as it is now?

Answer: “Education has always been important and always will be, but it all depends in your individual goals.”

Education nowadays is very  different from the one my grandma experience. In her time the demand of having a college education was a lot less than today’s demand. During her time education was optional because it wasn’t that hard to get a job a earned a decent salary. In today’s society not having a college education can make you life a lot harder, meaning that making money without a college education is hard. Education wasn't that important back then but now we live in a society were if you don't have a good education you'll need to work a lot harder to achieve a good economic status than those with a college education.

Works cited:

Cynthia, Pittmann. Interview an Elder by Batista, Gian. Class assignment UPRRP February 14 2018.

Life Compass Reflection

When this was first assign I didn't see the point of it. I wasn't motivated at all about this assignment but the good part was that it only took a couple of minutes. The only thing that I needed to do was rate my  awareness, emotional, physical and mental state from a scale of 1-3; 3 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. It may sound simple and that's exactly what I thought at first but as I did more compasses I began to really get the motive of this project. Thanks to it I learned a lot about my feelings and I also learned how to express them, which was a hard thing for me to do.

While analyzing my compasses I notice a strange pattern. My awareness and my emotions were always close when I was rating them, meaning that every time I felt great in my awareness I also felt great emotionally. That also happened with my physical state and my mental state. Thanks to this I learn something about how my body and emotions work together. This project made me realize that sometimes small things can affect others areas of my body, whether is good or bad. Another thing that I notice was that during all this time my emotional and mental status were pretty low most of the time, meaning that during this entire project I was feeling down and distracted. It is really interesting of how much you can learn about yourself by just analyzing simple things such as a compass.

Total compasses: 24

Total Points: 200

Graph of total  points per area and average score per area:

Works cited:

Cynthia, Pittmann. Life compass reflection by Batista, Gian. Class assignment UPRRP February 14 2018.

Reflection of About Men

This essay talks about one of the most controversial topics in our society; prejudice. Whether you admit it  or not, everybody has prejudice something and this is  introduce to us as we grow up. Our lives are based on prejudices and it's not our fault, it's the society’s fault. This essay is a perfect example of the use of  stereotypes due to society's ideologies. The author focuses on men’s stereotypes in this essay. It's main focus is in men’ roles in society. To show how society has been influenced by stereotypes, she talks about prejudice against cowboys. In the reading she talks about how people see cowboys, in this case the New York society. Cowboys are identified as serious men, hard workers, that show no feelings and are humorless. This is the perfect example of why stereotypes need to be corrected or proved wrong. The author  explain throughout the reading that not all cowboys are humorless and stern. She says that cowboys can have feelings like women and that being  kind and sweet doesn't make them  less masculine. I totally agree with her because I think that men are able to express their feelings. I think that expressing your feelings is more masculine than not expressing them at all. Because expressing your feelings is a hard thing and only  strong, courageous people can really express their feelings. This stereotype that tells that men can’t express their feelings is completely wrong and is all thanks to society. This is not the only stereotype that is wrong, there are others like for example: men's roles, actions,and behavior. I think that we, the modern society, need to change these old stereotypes. Maybe in the past it was normal to use these stereotypes, but things have changed and drastically. We need to stop judging people based on stereotypes given by society because a great deal of these stereotypes are wrong and most of the time they affect the people that are being judged. I'm not saying that all stereotypes need to be eliminated, because that is just impossible. What I'm saying is that most of these stereotypes are wrong. Before people use them, or make decisions based on them, they need to be sure they are not biased. In most cases, they are used wrongly, and those actions or decision can make or hurt other people.

Works cited:

Pittmann, Cynthia. About Men reflection by Batista, Gian. Class assignment UPRRP February 10 2018.

Group Project Reflection

Working in a group isn't something new for me; I did a lot of group projects in my high school.  I felt a little weird about doing a group project in college. I thought that in college there would be none or minimal group projects and hearing this the first week of my English class shook me. I was a little nervous because I didn't know anyone in my class. The day the teacher assigned the groups was a little bit awkward because nobody knew anybody. That same day, we were supposed to name our group and assign the responsibilities of each member. I was assigned to be one of the researchers. My job was to research about the topic or things relate to that topic that we were working on. Assigning the responsibilities was pretty fast, but deciding the name was kind of hard. We had no clue what name to choose for the group. Everybody started brainstorming about possible names, but as time passed we had only two possible names and none of them was that great. We decided to keep looking for names, until one of the members thought  that the group should be named English Thunder. We all agreed because it was simple, related to English, and to be honest it was the only good one we had.

I'm truly glad about this opportunity of working on a group project. It has helped me learn about various topics like for example: gender, racism, prejudice, and others. Also, thanks to it, I've made a couple of friends that I'm really glad to have. This project was really unique because unconsciously we were learning from each other and making ourselves better persons, but the thing that I'm really grateful for is that I had the opportunity to meet great people and if this opportunity comes again without a doubt I will do it again.

Works cited:

Pittmann, Cynthia. Group project reflection by Batista, Gian. Class assignment UPRRP February 12 2018.

Overcoming Hurricane Maria

September 16, 2017 is a date that will forever be remembered by Puerto Ricans. This was the day that everything changed, the day that Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. Before Maria I had never seen a real hurricane. Everyone prepared as well as they could by buying water and large supplies of canned food, putting panels over the windows and protecting their homes, but nobody knew exactly what to expect. I was nervous for what was coming, but little did I know how bad it was going to be. It was one of the worst and most horrifying experiences I have ever gone through.

At times I thought the house was going to collapse, but luckily there was not a lot of damage to the house. During the storm I opened my window and tried to record, but the intense showers of rain did not allow anything to be seen. Due to the loud noise of the wind I was barely able to sleep. The next day, I woke up in the afternoon, feeling very disoriented; the first thing I did was check if my family was alright, gladly they were. Relieved that my family members were fine, I went downstairs to check the house and found that the water had entered through the windows and front door, flooding the hallways. We stayed home the next day and waited for everything to be safe. When we were finally able to leave the house we drove around the community to see the damage. I was surprised  to find everything was pretty much intact, except for the park which was completely destroyed. There were tree branches and residue everywhere.

When we were able to go on the main roads and highways I realized the great amount of damage this hurricane had done to our island. Houses and trees had been completely detached from the ground, certain areas were flooded with feet of water, people were trapped in their houses and the island was left with little vegetation. The roads were blocked by street lights, posts and cables. I felt as if I were in an apocalypse movie. After seeing the damage that this natural disaster had caused, I realized that the situation we were about to face was going to be extremely difficult. Other than the destruction and floods that María caused, there were other consequences such as: scarcity of gas and food, the excruciatingly long lines to buy food and water, shortage of fundamental supplies, lack of working hospitals and pharmacies and the loss of electricity. These troubles caused people to panic and react in frantic ways, it was a catastrophe.

The loss of electricity made it impossible for people to contact their family members, leaving everyone in suspense and frustration. Many patients in hospitals died, as an effect of the power outage. It became so chaotic that the government had to set a curfew because they were many reports of people stealing and even murdering to find the necessary resources. People began to flee in from the island in search of their necessities, for example chemotherapy and dialysis patients which were left untreated. After Maria nothing was the same, it seemed we were living in the olden times, as if we had been thrown back in time.. Puerto Rico was going through a crisis and the people were clearly not dealing with it in the correct manner. I feared that we would never recover from this disaster and was concerned for what the future had in store for us, but as the weeks passed the conditions began to improve. It has been around two months since the hurricane and things are moving at a much faster pace than I expected.

I finally have electricity and running water, but up to this day there are still people that lack water, electricity, clothes and food. The main resources are slowly becoming  as accessible as before. This has been a very eye-opening and impacting experience. This hurricane caused pain and grief, but it also taught us to deal with what we have, help one another and forced people to take a very much needed break from technology. During these harsh times I have learned to be grateful for everything I have. Experiences like these serve as an opportunity to learn and mature. Although it has been rough, this situation has pushed the people of Puerto Rico to unite and work harder than ever. I hope that this island will never have to go through a situation such as this ever again, but if it does happen I will be calm and patient because I have learned that patience is the key to progress and that improvement comes with time. Keeping a positive and optimistic mindset I have faith that our island will overcome this obstacle. The marks that this hurricane has left on the island will forever serve as a reminder of our strength and capacity.

Works cited:

• Batista Cruz, Gian J. Narrative essay on Hurricane María Class assignment UPRRP 30 November 2017.

Reflection of Black Man and Public Space

Racism has been common since the early days of America’s development. Still nowadays racism is common topic and is a concern. We’ve all been taught, that racism is bad. But I still don’t understand, why this is still a problem in our society and the worst of it is that is present  in a large scale. For decades society has been in a constant fight with this problem, and people like Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and others have dedicate their lives to end racism. Sadly it hasn’t gone completely but there is still hope.

In this reading we are able to view racism, prejudice and injustice from a perspective of an african american. Throughout it, we experience multiple scenarios that the common Negro citizen has gone through. I think it’s really unfair for the african americans to feel judge everytime they are walking on the streets. Whether they feel judged by policemen, store owners, late night walkers, etc. I think that every human, no matter their race, religion and culture, needs to be treated the same. It really shocked me when the author talked about the time when he was chased by the security guard of his own job! That's just inexcusable. How come you can not feel safe on your own job?

I think that everybody should feel safe or feel like they belong to a place. Our society has made it extremely difficult for african americans to feel safe or to feel like they belong to something. Feeling that you don’t belong or being  judged from the moment you walk outside, has to be the worst feeling ever. Why do african americans need to adapt to our society, so that they can belong? That’s just doesn’t feel right. Every human being has the liberty to be whoever they want and not be judged by anyone. Racism has to come to an end. Let’s all join together and finish the dream of those who died trying to end racism, prejudices, unjustness, and judgement. Let’s honored their death by accomplishing their dreams. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”. - Martin Luther King Jr.

Works Cited:

Pittmann,Cynthia. Reflection of Black Men and Public Space by Gian Batista. Class assignment UPRRP January 30 2018

Reflection of Salvation

In this story we can see how not telling the complete truth can affect a person. Langston Hughes is a normal kid and like any other kid he will not behave well all the time. The church that Langston and his aunt attend to was a having a ceremony. This ceremony consisted in saving those lost lambs and helping them get to Jesus, by watching a light, that will save them. Every other kid went to the platform to be saved, except Langston and another named Wesley. Wesley eventually went up because he was tired of waiting but Langston stay a little while. He was waiting for Jesus. The time passed and Jesus didn’t show up, so he decided to go up, because he couldn’t hold on with all the pressure and it was getting late. This cause him to lie and to later on regret his decision. I don’t fully understand why these children are  being called sinners, because at that age they barely knew what’s right and what’s wrong.  I think that the church’s idea of saving the children and helping them be sin free is good, but I don’t like the method they use to achieve it. I didn’t like this because it was more like a peer pressure thing. I say this because the entire church was pushing them into making a decision that maybe they didn’t wanted to do. By doing this they obligate the children to decide and if they don’t, they will basically be judge. That thought of being judge is what push Langdon into lying; he didn’t want to feel judged neither to disappoint his aunt. I think that both, the Church and Langdon, weren’t fully honest. First the Church by pushing the children to go up to the platform and not telling the complete truth about Jesus, and second Langston by not being honest about what he couldn’t see.

What struck me the most was that Langston felt guilty, but at the same time he felt sad. How could a kid that is considered as a “sinner” feel guilt for a lye? That is really weird in my opinion because people that are called “sinners” don’t really care about a lie. By lying he thought that eventually he will see Jesus but it wasn’t like that at all. This cause in him to feel sadness, and disappointed. The consequence was that he lost his faith in Jesus and I don’t blame him because when somebody talks about you this amazing thing and that amazing thing doesn’t happen, one tend to lose faith. That is exactly what happen to Langston. He thought that eventually he will be safe and see the light, but in the end, nothing really happens.

Works cited:

Pittmann, Cynthia. Reflection from “Salvation” by Hughes, Langston. Class assignment UPRRP 26 December 2017.

Journal Reflection

I was assign  to write a total of forty journal entries during the course of eight weeks. I had to write one entry everyday of the week. The professor gave us some instructions on how to do the entries. The rules were: keep your hand moving, don't cross out, don't worry about spelling, punctuation or grammar, lose control, don’t think, don’t get logical, and go for the jugular. Another rule she gave us was, that you had only 10 minutes to write the entry and after the ten minutes you needed to make a brief two minute reflection of your entry.

During the first week, I had trouble following some of the rules that were established. I was failing on writing for ten minutes non stop and I was worrying about the grammar, punctuation, and spelling. It was really hard for me to write for ten minutes non stop, especially when your life isn't very interesting and it’s always a routine. There were times when  I couldn’t think of anything to write and that frustrated me a lot, because the point of the journals was to liberate all of your thoughts. Another thing that may have influenced in not having too much to write was focusing on the spelling, grammar and punctuation. I was focusing so much on writing everything perfectly that I was restraining my imagination. After the first week, I decided to be more creative and try my best not to focus on the grammar, spelling and punctuation. As soon as I forgot about those things I began to enjoy writing the journals. I was writing a lot more, because I felt more free; which was the point of the journal activity, to express and liberate our thoughts.

At the beginning of this project I thought that this was a total waste of my time, but as the weeks passed by, I started to like writing the journals because it was my way to escape from the real world. It became a place where I could write about anything and not be judged by anyone. This project really helped me a lot with my grammar, spelling, writing fluency, writing with a pen and new vocabulary. As the weeks passed, I was writing with less and less grammar and spelling errors; also my writing was 100 times better that when I started. I feel a lot more confident nowadays when it comes to writing in English, especially when using a pen and it is all thanks to the journals.

To be honest I am grateful for this assessment, because I have found a way to express all my feelings. Thanks to this, I’ve been able to be more creative and a lot better at expressing my feelings and thoughts. I now feel happier and relaxed. It has really changed my life. This helped me to get to know myself and thanks to that, I feel like a totally different person.

I enjoyed writing the entries because I knew that besides expressing my thoughts, I was also perfecting my English skills. I think that in a way it has truly opened me, when it comes to writing. I have noticed the changes when I’m writing essays or when I’m commenting on some of my classmate’s assignments. This experience has helped me a lot, because when I started this project my English writing skills were very poor. Nowadays, whenever I have to do some writing, I have no problem at all with it.

This project hasn’t really connected me to other fields of study. I used this project more as a gateway, so all of my entries are focused on my thoughts and feelings. When I was working the journal I was going through various situations. The journal helped me get through tough times and you will see that because most of my entries are focused on my feelings, thoughts, and experiences at that time.

In conclusion I loved the journal! It was a unique way of doing multiple things at the same time because as I was doing the journal I was also practicing my grammar, spelling, creativity, punctuation and handwriting, confidence, and gaining fluency. In addition it helped me learn how to express my thoughts and how to organize my ideas in a better way.  I loved this experience because it helped me overcome hard moments; the journal was the only place where I could really relax my mind. This project was truly a unique experience that I actually enjoyed doing.

Works Cited:

Pittman, Cynthia. Journal reflection by Gian Batista. Class assignment UPRRP 18 January 2018.

Girl Reflection

This story was a little  hard to understand at first. When I started reading it, I didn’t  fully understand why it was written the way it was, but as I continued to read I finally understood. It really caught my attention the form in how this story was written. It  doesn’t have an introduction neither  conclusion, and it is written like a run on sentence; it was like reading a long list of things to do.  As you continue to read you realize that the passage is about a mother teaching her daughter the ways she need  to behave and the abilities to do certain things, to become a proper women. She starts by telling her how to do household chores, like cleaning the clothes, how to buy good cotton, etc. The mother then continues giving her instructions about relationships, how to behave at dinner, around people, and especially men, etc. The story  is literally a list of things that the daughter needs to do, to become a proper women. One thing that caught my attention was the use of the word “slut” multiple times. I think the mother was telling her not be a slut because sluts were treated like garbage or because she went through a similar experience and didn’t went so well for her. In my opinion I think that the mother is giving her all these instructions based on past experiences. She is trying to help her daughter not to do the same things that she did; all she wants is the best for her daughter. Her goal is to help convert her daughter into a proper women. By all the instructions that she give her daughter you can see that being a women in that time wasn’t easy at all. You needed to have various skills or abilities and behave a certain way  in order  to be considered a proper woman.

    Life a couple of years back was a bit rough, especially for women. Still in the modern times things are not as easy for women as it is for men. So when you read this story try to put that into perspective. Imagine how hard it must be for a young girl to receive all those instructions and follow them in order to be accepted by the society.

Works cited:

Pittmann, Cynthia. Reflection from “ Girl” by Kincaid, Jamaica. Class assignment UPRRP 26 December 2017.