Cover Letter
What’s poppin’ guys? I’m Sadia (Tasnim) and this is my English 110 Portfolio!
At the start of the semester, I wanted to be able to learn to stand up for my beliefs a little better; have a stronger voice, both in writing and in speaking. I think that through this class, I’ve gotten closer to that goal because Professor Sidibé herself has an unyielding voice and encourages us to always have a strong argument along with a counter argument which we later disprove. The class discussions themselves have made me want to speak out more than I usually do (which is not often to begin with) so I consider that a small success. The assignments for this class did get me excited about writing once I sat down and got started on them and made me wish I had more time to delve deeper into their topics and meanings. This class has also made me have thoughts about reconsidering my major; moving from engineering to something of the humanities but I’ve still got a lot to think through before I make that decision.
I think my major setbacks for this course weren’t that it was difficult or unclear; it was more of my own lateness or personal obstacles that kept me from fully giving the course the attention I should have been able to give it. It has made me learn that I am not a bad writer or a bad student, I just need to commit to my responsibilities and everything else will fall into place.
Self Assessment:
The Introduction Letter:
Because I am naturally a more closed off and hesitant person, this assignment did seem daunting at first. I’ve found that although I walk into class with a sense of trepidation, I always walk out feeling like I should have said so many things that I didn’t say. There has been much discussion about identity and vulnerability in the class and in the spirit of being open about who we are, I sat down to write the Intro Letter.
I always find that when someone asks me to talk about myself, I become at a loss for words. And every time I write something like this, I find myself again. I also think that I was influenced by the tone of the class where everyone was encouraged to be open about their experiences and what shaped them so I was able to talk about my family and issues that I grew up with for the first time in this letter that I hadn’t mentioned anywhere else. Overall, that has helped me able to come to terms with my experiences and understand a little more about why I am the way I am. It wasn’t too difficult once I sat down to just do it.
The Critical Response Essay:
This assignment was a little difficult for me since it was the first time I had to write about multi-literacy and I had a shaky understanding of what that meant. It took some time to realize that multi-literacy would be included in the essay either way and it didn’t need a direct mention, but the modes through which information was presented would have to be talked about. For example, I didn’t have to redefine multi-literacy but I did have to talk about how both writing and spoken communication or education can present the same information.
Once I got the hang of how to write multi-literacy into my essay, the rest was fairly simple because I had chosen to write about education and colonialism and Kincaid had so many usable quotes in her piece that could be connected back to the colonial education system. I think I learned that I am more of an advocate for education than I ever thought about before; because it’s something that seemingly everyone should have access to in my time but there are so many underlying and past instances of education or lack thereof completely shaping a person’s life. I think this later prompted me to write about education for my research paper as well.
The Research Paper:
Following my critical response, I chose to write about education in my research paper as well. I think the topic has so many facets to it that can be explored like race, imprisonment, ethnicity, finances, colonialism; the list could go on. All of these issues are so intertwined together and affect so many different groups. At first, I was only familiar with the school to prison pipeline that affected majorly Black people but I remembered reading a short story by a Native American writer that was basically a recount of a family gathering where a fight broke out but the underlying message was about how Native Americans have really high rates of alcoholism which leads to kids growing up with absent or imprisoned parents and the kids themselves then get into trouble. This got me thinking about Sherman Alexie’s piece and how education, drugs, and jail were all related.
It turned out that there were big statistics on education and Native American rates of incarceration and the school to prison pipeline is more diverse than I originally thought. It felt kind of liberating to be able to connect all these problems that were normally just attributed to Natives or Black people being inferior as people or as races to actual real life actions that caused their situations. No race is inherently less or more than another and blaming a race for problems that stemmed form generations of abuse and oppression is hardly fair. It felt good to be able to say literally all of their problems are because of colonialism from the alcoholism to the absent parents to the delinquent teens to the run down schools to the filled jail cells; all of it is not their fault.
The Presentation:
The presentation was a little nerve wracking since I tend to speak super fast when I get in front of an audience and forget my points. But I think it went well; the class, as always, was supportive. I liked that the prompt for the presentation was so open so that every person who presented could bring their own background and experiences into it and formulate a question unique to them.
I do think I could’ve done better, though. I realized this after Ahmad’s presentation when he talked about his background, his country, politics, and family. I had more to say and relate to on Thiong’o but I limited myself thinking it was just a class presentation when I should have considered it more as a discussion that I was leading.
The Vlog:
I chose to make something simple and easy that I really love to eat. It’s also something that’s traditionally made in Bengali households and every mom has their own little spin on the recipe. My mom never measures any of her quantities; it’s like she just knows based on the size of the container how much of each ingredient she should put in. So when I was writing down a recipe, it was a little funny trying to quantify all of her eye balled ingredient amounts.
I had been meaning to learn how to make this for a while, so this vlog assignment gave me a chance to do that and hopefully, this upcoming Eid, my mom will let me make the pudding.
