Reflection Letter

Hi! I am Lisa Howard and a 44 year old parent and grandparent. I originally went to college for five years at Pierce, Diablo Valley and CSUN back in the early eighties and then worked at Children’s Hospital in Seattle in the mid eighties and taught junior and senior high school and headed up the science department at Stilliguamish Valley School back in the late nineties. I have gone back to school a couple of times taking correspondence courses through Western Washington University and Berean Bible College. I had always promised myself I would return to get a degree in art after my children were all in college. I was originally pre med in school. Since my youngest child, Jeremiah, is 16 and in Running Start at Everett Community College I decided it was time to take on the challenge. However, as I am very ill, I take almost all of my courses online.
The themes of our course hit very close to home in some ways and were extremely unfamiliar to me in others. Throughout this quarter our family has been dealing with the declining health of my granddaughter Kennedi and I have been in the hospital numerous times myself. Kennedi passed away late Saturday night, December 1st. As we studied identity, I often pondered what exactly establishes one’s identity. In the case of Kennedi and I, both people who usually wear nothing but pajamas, do not watch television or listen to the radio and live very sheltered lives from society in general, it cannot be how we relate to society as a whole. Kennedi’s life has come and gone with barely a notice and yet those who met her will always be touched by her smile and her ability to fight and beat all odds against her for such a long time. Kennedi’s community, as well as my own, consists primarily of our family and physicians. This is why I was so touched by “Ending Poem” which relates how the identity of an individual is interwoven with their identity within their family. I have chose to present this piece as my Critical Thinking Piece. While looking at our tradition theme I found myself looking with longing at the days long past in the previous century when families were much closer and bound through multiple generations often with three and four generations living and working together in the same home toward a common goal. This again tied closely in with the theme of the “Ending Poem”.
My Revision Piece is chosen from my timed write on “Remember the Titans” as the theme of this film also ties so closely with issues that our family faced. Kennedi’s mother, my daughter is white and her father is black, so on top of the complexities of her medical conditions, were the reactions of the people that came and went, woven within her life (hospice nurses, doctors, etc.). When I originally wrote my timed write, I underwrote about how the movie challenged my personal concepts and merely focused on the contents of the movie. I am now going to include in my revision a paragraph of my private feelings on the issue of “othering”.
For my Voice and Audience Piece I am going to include two paper talk posts to fellow students relating to them possible ways to enhance their writing skills. I have taken English 101 in the past as well as five other college English courses and was able to be of some assistance to my fellow group mates early on in the Paper Talks as many were unfamiliar with putting together a prompt driven paper with a thesis, antithesis and synthesis section. Communication is one of the most important tools a person learns in working in groups as we did in this course and I believe that we all had the opportunity to hone our communication skills through the discussion board and group assignments. This part of the course definitely stretched and challenged my thinking as we discussed various issues within our groups. The most controversial discussion in the group was probably the look at the essays on the homosexual male on testosterone and the female who chose to shave her head. These essays challenged each of us to communicate respectfully and try to understand one another’s points of view. This again relates closely to the theme of family, as communication is the most important part of maintaining strong family ties. Without strong communication between family members, a family grows or even falls apart.
For my Writer’s Choice Piece I have chosen to include my discussion of my wallet’s contents. It shows how easily we misunderstand one another and draw inappropriate conclusions. It was my first blog post and I found blogging to be one of my favorite parts of this course. I spent a great deal of time personalizing my blog page and thoroughly enjoyed cruising the pages of other class members. I also used this page as an opportunity to share information with my family from out of state who checked in regularly to see what I was up to and see new pictures and news coverage of Kennedi as well as video streaming from the charities I work for through the internet.
The primary weakness in my writing continues to be taking on too broad a topic and trying to cover too much ground in any given paper. Given the comments my instructor’s have made, it does not appear that I have made much progress in this area and will have to continue to work on this skill in future writing courses. My fellow group mates seemed to always enjoy my writing posts and I appreciated their input throughout the quarter, as it was always encouraging.
I must say that given my lifestyle I would have probably enjoyed a much more traditional English course as I really don’t care what Brittany Spears is doing these days nor do I have any interest in fashion or most forms of pop culture. I was challenged to step outside my sheltered life and look at things I would never normally be bothered with. Ultimately, however, I prefer classic literature to pop culture and would always rather read non-fiction than fiction. I did enjoy the themes we covered in our course; however, I would have enjoyed a little more freedom in selecting what to write about within the three themes: Identity, Community, and Tradition.