Ivanna Dominguez 

Professor Kerryanne Bell

Writing for the Social Sciences 

December 19, 2020

Self-Assessment 

It’s difficult to explain the kind of relationship I have with writing because it has burned me in the past but it has also given me freedom. I love to write for myself because I feel like we have so many thoughts that are difficult to explain through speaking but writing it down provides a feeling of release. I hated writing in high school because we were always forced to write about a book and topic that the teacher chose. I realized when I write for someone else I don’t enjoy it as much as when I do it for myself. Once I got to college I started to enjoy writing a little more because I was given freedom on topics, something I could be passionate about. After taking this course I really enjoyed writing because there was versatility in the topics but the theme of the course touched on real-life issues. 

This semester there were many course objectives that were detailed in the syllabus which in the beginning I found overwhelming and did not believe I could achieve. Truthfully I was right because I was unable to achieve every course objective but I did find myself improving after every essay. To me writing is a learning experience because you learn from the writing you have done in your past and apply this knowledge to your future writing. When it came to enhancing strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment I always made sure to write down all of my ideas. When I was drafting I always wrote everything that came to my mind so when it was time to revise it was easy to exclude the unnecessary things. When formulating and articulating a stance through my writing, I always made sure to state my thesis and follow-through in discussing it. This semester the use of sources has definitely been a big part of this course and searching in online databases and the internet was crucial in supporting your thesis or to make your point. Overall the most important course objective I improved on was using critical thinking in order to analyze, evaluate, and explain on a deeper level the thesis, sources, and information. 

Besides just improving I also learned many new things like the importance of sources and  how to be impartial while writing an essay I never used to like finding sources because it was extra work for me and I didn’t deem it necessary. During my first semester of college, I realized the importance of quotes but I didn’t actually start to take quotes seriously until this course. Quotes are important because you need something to support the evidence you just presented. Quotes give an essay just extra information and most times provide statistics or percentages that are beneficial to your essay. Learning to be impartial was difficult because society has implanted these stereotypes and preconceptions in our minds about different groups in our communities. I will admit that in the past I gave in to certain stereotypes and unintentionally categorized people. Once something is in your head it’s difficult to abandon it and adopt a new way of thinking. In this course, I had to do just that and I did it by trying to forget what I thought I knew and allowing myself to learn new things. It wasn’t easy because sometimes I would catch myself writing something stereotypical without realizing it and had to go back and change it. 

The most important thing I learned from this course was about marginalized communities because I didn’t even know what that word meant before this course. I was aware of the stereotypes and mistreatment of minorities and definitely considered myself to be one since I am a Hispanic woman. I also live in the South Bronx which is a community where the majority of the population is a minority but never knew anything about marginalization. This may be weird to say but I am proud to be a part of marginalized communities despite all the negatives because I wouldn’t be the person I am today without my ethnic background, my gender, or where I grew up. This course was more than just reading and writing because I felt a connection to the topics I wrote about and sometimes related to them from a different perspective. I didn’t just learn how to be a better writer but also to realize all the things that need to change in the world and how I can actually be a part of that change.