Reflection 

Self as a Reader:  

When thinking about the books I read for entertainment on my spare time, I used to read it for my own entertainment and wondered how it can relate to me. For example, if the main character went through something and was going through a low point, I always wondered when I was in the same predicament and what I did to get out of it to predict what was going to happen in the next pages. After this semester, my reading skills have changed. Now, as I am now reading a different book, I am thinking more about what the intentions of the author were when writing this book and what can everyone take away from it. In this FIQWS class, I have noticed that there have been many intertextual couplings; however, the main two sources that have stood out even though they don’t intend to have the same messages were the videos called The Land and Iggy Peck, Architect. Both videos involved a lot of childlike features for more of a broad audience while including children in the film. There were many texts that related but the reason why this one stood out the most was because of the large spectrum of audience this can relate to as well as each age group relating to it or getting a different message from it. For example, in the film The Land while adults can understand how potent children’s minds are and sometimes you should let their imagination run freely, many young children can watch this film as entertainment and use it as a guide to start making their own toys or their own playground in order to unleash their imagination and understand that it’s okay to try something different as long as your doing things that wouldn’t harm you.  

 

Writing Situations:  

When told to summarize and respond to my own questions of a text I’ve just read, I never understood how important it is to do that. I’ve always rewrote what was in the text which was summarizing for me and just responded to what everyone questioned or something that was unclear and never got anything out of summarizing and responding. Coming into FIQWS, I wasn’t a fan of doing that because I thought it was unnecessary especially if I wasn’t going to be graded for it; however, as one summary and response turned into four or five, I found a lot of joy in writing my thoughts of what I got out of a text and deeply questioned what was going on within it; also, with reflecting on ungraded pieces in this class, I learned that I improved in summarizing when it comes to complex text and terminated what was written in the text and started to summarize with key aspects of the text and including what I believe what was written instead of writing word for word something I didn’t understand. I’ve noticed that when my summarizing changed and improved, it made conversations with my fellow classmates more interesting and longer. If I wrote word for word what was already in the text, all I was doing when I spoke to classmates about the text was give them evidence that both my classmate and I already knew. Now, writing was I believed what was portrayed created more discussions and debates because minds do think alike which furthered my acknowledgement of the text because not only did I have my own thoughts of the text, I also had my classmates thought that I can either agree with and use as evidence on a paper, or use it as a counter argument when using an argumentative paper in the further future.  

 

Language and Identity:  

Being a young low-income Latina in this world, it has created a lot of setbacks but more goals for me in the future. Before starting honors English my senior year of high school, I never valued nor acknowledged writers who were just like me and suffered through the same things’ society has built for us. But reading these books and seeing TedTalks of people that reminded me of myself and my classmates really did make me appreciate literature more and be more into it. Knowing that not all classes and especially college wouldn’t really emphasize the importance of your own language, I pushed that passion away from myself. Starting my first semester on FIQWS and given the text My Mother’s Garden by Kaitlyn Greenidge, it started to unlock again the connection I have to the greater world, more specifically, the connection I have to many writers. I believe understanding your own language and identity is very important when it comes to becoming a writer and even reading in general. Not only does it create an understanding of what divorces you from the larger community, it also shows how you as a writer can start building a bigger community of your own language and identity so that other readers can use that as support when it comes to finding themselves in text, films, or books.