Humanities POL 2015
How I evolved as a writer:
I have evolved as a writer because when I read an article I immediately start to annotate it in order to understand it better. Before reading The Things They Carried I didn’t really put attention to writing strategies. After finishing the book I understood more about the types of writing. For example, describing a character’s physical appearance, describing the setting in the exposition, and telling a character’s emotional reaction to an event.
Academic growth:
In class we had to write a memoir about the things our loved one carried, and I decided to write about my cousin. It goes, “Despite everything good she carried with her, she also carried with her, she also carried hatred. Her eyes would turn a dull brown that could turn your whole world upside down.” Another piece of writing that shows how much I’ve grown as a writer the memoir that I wrote about my dad. It says, “His skin looked a little bit darker and his face looked tired, but there was still a shine in his eyes that I will never forget.”
Social example:
I asked my mom to buy me a little notebook so that I could practice my writing. When I got home I would write a short poem almost everyday. I think that if we hadn’t read The Things They Carried, I wouldn’t have been interested in writing.
Biggest area of growth:
The biggest part where I’ve grown as a writer is being able to describe things. I noticed this because when we started writing our memoir I started to notice how I added a lot of descriptive parts. For example, I started describing objects and places, which I had never really done before.
Symbolism of image:
For the writer’s I was able to work on my writing a lot since we had a few chances to write for a few minutes without stopping while listening to a sound. For example, one time we listened to the sound of rain for about three minutes and write about a memory. Every time we did things like this, I noticed how my writing would begin to include more details and more feeling. Also, the image of the memoir represents a project that I was really proud of because I added a lot of descriptions and writing strategies.
My POL Panelist Reflection:
I learned that everyone has different ideas. Also, that everyone has found different tasks difficult. This is important to me because I thought that everyone would've found the same assignments as I did difficult. Everyone also evolved at a different pace and in different ways.
I learned that in making a 'good' POL you have to be honest. For example, being honest in what you've struggled with and how you evolved. Also, being organized and prepared. For example, knowing your speech and knowing which slide goes next. Also, showing a lot of evidence, so the point of growing as a scientist and a writer is clear. Adding the evidence of work from the beginning of the semester until the end of the semester.
I think that everyone helped the presenter to pass their POL because as an audience we asked good questions. For example, the questions were about the evidence and one of the requirement were to explain how you evolved as a scientist and a writer. If the thesis statement wasn't clear enough we would ask a question to clarify it, To help every student we could also give more critique to the weak parts so the next presentation would be better.
My POL Presenter Reflection:
The most helpful question that helped me on my POL was to give an example of how the picture of y growth represented my evolution as a scientist. I would add more examples of my growth to make my POL better. This would make my POL better because it would show that my knowledge actually expanded a lot. My goal for the next semester is to start thinking about physics outside of school. When I was doing the physics section for my POL I realized that I didn't really share what happened in class outside of school and with my family, so I want to start doing that. I will challenge myself by sharing what I read in the Science Current Events with my mom, so she can be more aware of what's going on in the world. I will know that I reached my goal because I will ask myself to give examples of how I started to use physics outside of school.