Reflection

After discussing Project 1 with Mat at the Sweet Shop, I better understood what I had to do with the project. He told me I had to change the point of view, since my original “text” was a YouTube video called “Things Puerto Ricans Are Tired of Hearing”. I could instead use a simple conversation, that was only a miniscule part of my narrative, as my main text. This way, it would be more of a “personal” narrative, because it was a text that I had personally encountered and not something you could find online. Just as with this text, I needed to include more information that the reader could only get from me. To do this, I could talk about what my family and friends experienced during the hurricane, which the media was not getting out efficiently. In addition, I could discuss how frustrating it was for all of the Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States to see our home destroyed and barely get any news or attention from the U.S., as well as being unable to communicate with our loved ones due to the disaster left by hurricane María.

My project two was originally going to be about the application of the Fulbright Program. Nonetheless, when I started to do my research, I decided that I really wanted to examine the program’s marketing. I noticed that only a few people know about this program, and wanted to figure out what they were doing wrong. Mat had fewer comment on my Project 2. He said I could compare the community I was examining to other similar organizations such as the Peace Corps and other recruiters. I was confused about whether I should examine multiple social media websites or just one. Mat told me it was okay to examine several Instagram posts from their page, as well as my cousin’s, who is a former scholar. Being used to traditional research papers, I asked Mat if it was okay if I used first person, included opinion, and added suggestions. He said that of course I could, and even that I should. However, the suggestions needed to be backed up with research.

For the third project, it helped me to look through past classes’ wix pages and different multigenre projects to choose the three genres I was going to use. I had to pick genres that could help me divulge the importance of the Fulbright Program and it’s participants. I ended up picking a thankyou email to the person that I interviewed for the second project, a map of the world with the participating countries colored in, and a Facebook post with information about the program and the map attached. I believe these represented my message really well.

Before this class, I had no idea the amount of existent genres and texts, I only knew the basics. Being that so, project one gave me a little bit of a hard time. I am not used to writing personal narratives, as most classes throughout my academic career have only asked for essays. Consequently, I recently decided to modify my narrative again. In this new version, I added more personal examples, as well as information from trustworthy sources in order to make myself a reliable source for my readers as well. I believe this will greatly improve the quality of my personal narrative. Project two was easier, since it was a more typical genre. However, it still allowed for variations such as using first person and opinion. Lastly, I though project three would be the hardest. As I said earlier, being previously unfamiliar with genres, this project somewhat scared me. However, when I actually did it I noticed it was the easiest project out of the three. I simply had to get my mind to accept that there are numerous genres and ways to convey your message. Overall, my experience in this class was much better than with previous English classes. Though I did not enjoy writing, I enjoyed going to class and discussing something different every day, as well as hearing my classmates’ perspective. Mat made us feel comfortable when expressing ourselves, instead of simply adhering to the norm. This “liberal” quality was what I think made the class so great.