Self Assessment 

Throughout the course of this semester, I learned to be more comfortable with using language that is unconventional and not usual in the academic sphere. I often separated creative writing and academic writing, but this class has shown me that the purpose of words and language is to communicate, so limiting the kind of words I can use is counterproductive. 

I acknowledged my own and other people’s linguistic abilities and drew on them as resources when I wrote my Classmate interview essay and the Personal Artifact Essay. While asking family members about my Personal Artifact essay, I had to talk to them in my native language. When trying to translate the story of my grandfather from Malayalam to English, I had a hard time trying to explain old adages or certain words. For example, the word for the tiger tooth pendant is much much smaller than the phrase “tiger tooth pendant.” During the Classmate Interview essay, I learned about linguistic differences between different people in New York. When I interviewed my participant, the diction used was different to mine because she is from Harlem and I am from Long Island. However, it was sometimes easier to understand her feelings and point of view when she spoke with her dialect because it described her feelings better. 

As a writer, I enhanced strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment. The way that assignments were designed helped me achieve these goals because I had to submit two different drafts of the same essay, and then I will submit a polished final draft. It conveyed the idea that there is always room for improvement, and it doesn’t mean the first draft isn’t good enough. 

Negotiating my own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situations was another goal I reached through this class. In the cover letters of my essay, I was expected to write about the purpose of my essay and the effect I want it to have on people. Reflecting on these points made me realize that my writing pieces can have an effect on other people than myself. As I said above, I realized that academic writing doesn’t have to be rigid and traditionally “professional”. For example, in my Interview essay, I said “I want to highlight the fact that culture is a web of different relationships.” I used the word “I” in the sentence. 

The Classmate Interview essay also showed me how writing can be a collaborative process. Instead of just writing down my thoughts, this essay showed how there can be a dialogue and you don’t have to completely control the story you are writing. I had a set of ideas and facts about the community in Harlem, and although a lot of the information aligned with what the participant told me, I was able to build on my ideas. The experience personalized the facts and put faces to the numbers and statistics. The conversation exposed me to many new sources of information as well. For example, the participant spoke about the cosmopolitan canopy that is 125th street. She spoke about it almost as an outsider, which showed me how she feels about this space. 

Multimodal composing was an interesting part of this class because, again, it changed my idea of what academic writing was. I didn’t realize that videos and pictures can add to my writing without overshadowing it. In my mind, I believed that adding pictures would make my writing more childish. However, adding multimodal media can enhance the story you are trying to tell. Adding pictures of what the Dark Academia “aesthetic” could’ve helped readers visualize members of the subculture better. Before the class, I used to think of pictures in pieces of writing as “picture books”, where the pictures are the central mode of communication. However, now I realize that pictures can carry a message while not overshadowing the writing. 

I formulated a stance in my mini-ethnography essay because I had to make some conclusions about the community. I often feel that in the case of making conclusions, I feel less confident because I am afraid of it being wrong. However, I realized that making a conclusion doesn’t mean that my stance cannot change. I was afraid to say that Dark Academia is trend based and not a traditional culture, but as more information emerges, stances should change. 

Using databases from CCNY libraries helped me strengthen my source use practices because it forced me to pick sources that are reliable. CCNY libraries had advanced searches that I could use where I have to enter keywords, which helped me form a skeleton of my paper. It showed me what kind of articles I should look for. I always looked at journal articles only, and the databases opened up different types of resources. I even looked at political cartoons when researching the mini-ethnography essay. Additionally, I looked at sources such as Youtube and Instagram, which are sources that are notoriously unreliable. I looked at these sources because these are pieces of information that people actively see, and the information can change their daily routines even if it is incorrect. 

I negotiated my writing goals when writing my subculture research essay because research essays were very unfamiliar to me, let alone a research essay about a subculture. I had to use different methods of research because the research question is rooted in the social sciences, as opposed to the strict sciences I learned about in high school.

This class has pushed the boundaries and redefined the meanings of the Course Objectives. I am more comfortable stepping out of the rigid Academic writing styles, and I am more comfortable using words such as “I” and “me”.