As I’m nearing to the end of my freshman year in college, I’ve begun to realize something. I believe that the end of each semester can be compared to the end of a school year, and I’m talking about when you finish a grade in high school up to your senior year. You might ask how so? Well, in both cases, there’s always some sort of self-reflection assignment, at least in my English classes, that concludes my experience at each grade level. This is what I call marking your self growth.
Out of all the English classes I’ve taken so far, I can confidently say ENW 210 was a different ambience. I faintly remember on the first day, professor Sidibe told us that some of us needed to do some soul searching in response to our answers and lack thereof to her philosophical questions, and I knew I fit into that grey area. I came into this class with hopes of understanding literary works and authors’ writing mechanisms to become a better writer. The majority of my time in this class was definitely intimidating. Professor Sidibe had this confidence and wisdom I’ve never encountered before and is an articulate person that suits her teaching style. Although I haven’t quite overcome the pressure to participate and my shyness, this class has changed me for the better. The various assignments relating to creative expression has paved a path for me to express my ideas and experiences freely in writing. The works we’ve read, which were both relatable and engaging, has broaden my perspective to the incidences in our world. I appreciate that this class was a bit more than just writing and reading where we had discussions based on social issues like feminism and racism and has taught me something new. My overall work in the class was not only challenging, especially my memoir piece, but made me realize how powerful a work can be by including the different elements like “show V.S. tell” or using the five senses. It’s something that I can include in my writing moving forward. As a nursing major at Lehman college, creative writing wouldn’t be associated with this major, but it’s nice to be part of something not science related. This class has made me consider writing as a hobby about things that I have trouble expressing verbally because that’s the purpose of this class the way I view it. I’ve learned so much about the little things like language and bigger issues like the mindset of society in such little time that actually made me feel a little woke. Aside from that, if there was one take away that I’ll forever have ingrained in my brain, it would be using the five senses to make my writing come alive.
The first assignment was the in-class presentation and boy was I nervous! I wasn’t familiar with my peers, and I already had an issue of being an introverted person. With that being said, presenting my research and thoughts was difficult and for a few reasons. However, researching my assigned author was certainly the more relaxing part of the assignment since it was just me and Google. I didn’t have much connection with the author; it was more of just getting to know her achievements, childhood, and the themes present in her works. However, I found her fiction piece, “Sweetness” to be somewhat relatable which was helpful with creating questions.
The presentation itself was pretty basic because there wasn’t any techniques I used to engage my peers and present what I’ve researched. Having a little slideshow or showing a clip of an interview of my author are somethings I could’ve done. Another thing I actually regret not doing was sharing a little bit of what I found to be relatable but again, I wasn’t too comfortable. One of my questions asked if you could relate to the story in terms of a mentality that if you’re dark, you’ll have a harder time fitting in society, and I wanted to share how that’s prevalent in the South Asian culture and bring up a skin product that supports this type of mentality. From this assignment, I’ve learned to be creative with what you’ve researched and how you’re going to present this information and not be so conscious about your own ideas.
The first writing assignment that we had to do was a fiction piece. My initial view was “okay it’s not bad, it’s JUST a story” but as I got to take a look at some of my peer’s work and discuss them, there were a couple of key elements of fiction writing that makes it meaningful and not JUST a story. What’s interesting about my overall piece was that I noticed outside events has some influence, in general, your creativity and in turn what you write. During the time I was writing this, there was an attack in Pulawama and many soldiers died and that sort of became incorporated in my work as it revolves around a dream to become a soldier. In my writing, I tried to throw in a few symbolisms like the title. “Maya”, in reference to the character is supposed to represent that character’s unconditional love and support for both her husband and her daughter, and I wanted to show that role of a mother. The date in the story, May 28th, when Naina was born and Jai had died represents Memorial Day which again goes back to what the story revolved around.
As I was writing this, I tried to include as much ideas that were discussed in class as possible, so it was sort of a continuous work as I kept revising until the due date. What was challenging about this piece was the pacing. I didn’t understand how slow I should pace without overdoing it in the showing aspect. Another issue I had was with the dialogues. In a sense, I feel like it didn’t capture the emotions of the characters as much and was “fast”, so I included either a brief description before the dialogue or an adjective that gives meaning to them. What was simple was the characterization because it didn’t take too much time and sort of came naturally to me.
From the feedback, I learned that I needed to slow down in a few areas where it was just a summary of what was happening. I can definitely see that and adding a scene that reflects those summaries would help with the flow. Comparing this assignment to the memoir, which is a combination of fiction and poem, I feel like there was a growth in showing and using the five senses to help with that. I really enjoyed writing this because I was able to take charge of the plot and characters the way I want to. Overall, I think I was somewhat successful in capturing this “requited dream” so in the story, Jai’s failure of getting into the army became his daughter’s dream that she fulfilled.
The poems were my favorite assignment out of the others because I honestly had fun writing them. I remember in class, we mediated for a few minutes and professor Sidibe said that we should write about the thing that we kept coming back to. I didn’t write about that one thing because I wanted my poems to be meaningful in a positive manner. My intention for the first poem was to use word play so the title, “Soulmates” was a perfect word to use. People usually associate this word with love and relationship which I wanted at first for people to see it in that manner and then at the end, reveal that it’s about friendship. The second poem, “Inside a Temple” is a special poem for me because religion is part of my daily life, and I wanted to express that it has impacted mentally and spiritually.
Both of the poems were topics I already had in mind to write about because of the prompts we did in class and the components in a poem which we discussed so that part was simple. However, starting the first poem was difficult because I didn’t know where to start. When I got around to the first sentence of the first stanza, it took me quite some time to express other things within my friendship, so I had to brainstorm and recall some memorable events. I also threw in a song reference there, “Pretty Girl Rock” by Keri Hilson which I was listening to in the process of writing this poem. The second poem was all about using the five senses, so I really had to “be there” in my memory. What was simple about this was that I started with the first thing that happened while I was at my local temple and then from there, I was able to write about the things I saw and heard in sequence. One thing I had trouble describing were the gods’ clothes because I couldn’t remember exactly some of the colors and the embroidery on them. Writing these two poems felt like jotting down some things that I’m grateful for, and I really enjoyed expressing them.
The memoir was the most difficult writing assignment because I wasn’t expecting to write something personal. I thought about writing something that’s far from the hardships that we deal with in life. But I’m glad I did this because the subject which was about my relationship with my mom had been in the back of my head for some time, and I felt lighter after writing about it. At first, I couldn’t think of anything that has changed my life dramatically because honestly speaking, my life is pretty plain and the only excitement I get is with when I’m around my friends. The prompt we did in class really helped because I realized that it doesn’t have to be about a certain event; it could be about a person or an intangible asset in my life.
What was the most difficult was that I couldn’t pinpoint a specific time with my mom; it was a combination of the different memories I had with her. I was uncertain about how I was going to make this memoir flow nicely because I was focused more on the memories rather than focusing on the point I wanted to get across. What was simple was that I knew I was going to be writing about my mom and I had a lot of other events that I could intertwine which was convenient. Because of this, I didn’t spend too much time on one memory and that I could move on to the next memory.
The workshop of my memoir in my class was helpful and insightful on what improvements I could make. I learned that my memoir should start with the food scene which was quite surprising because that was the one memory I didn’t want to get all the attention to. I also learned that I should include the little things like my nationality especially in my case where I mentioned food from Nepal. Professor Sidibe suggested that I should have “breaks” in my memory so doing something or smelling that reminds me of a memory and sort of following that format. I thought this was a great idea especially because I was going from the past to the present.
The monologues/dialogues we had to do was based on universal themes. I thought this was more of a free style assignment which I liked because it doesn’t have to be a dialogue based on real characters, it could be fictional. I picked dialogues, and the theme my partner and I chose was the fear of failure with a twist. At first, we brainstormed a couple of themes such as manipulation/secrecy, religion (belief in god), pride, and fear of failure. Then, we recorded a video where we discussed about each of these topics which made it easier for us to come up with a plot for our dialogues.
We picked fear of failure because it was personal for both of us and especially for me. I thought this would be something most if not all people can relate to. When we were having the discussion on this topic, I brought up about how fear of failure isn’t all academic wise, it could relate to different aspects in life such as being infertile which was the “twist” in our dialogue. We didn’t know whether it would be insensitive to play a character with an infertility issue because it’s so personal. Also, a little disclaimer, our intention wasn’t to mock such a sensitive topic and hopefully no one gets offended!
What was difficult was the video 100%! I would say I’m such a difficult person to work with because I’m a laugher. We had to retake SO MANY scenes of our lines because I either messed up or I couldn’t stop laughing. This also made the video and the editing time consuming. What was simple was coming up with our dialogues especially for my part as I play a struggling student because it’s relatable. My partner’s part took a little bit of time but what made her part a bit easier was that we both have family members who have dealt with an infertility issue, so we had an idea of what it feels like. Although it was time consuming, it was such a fun experience.
The last assignment we had to do was a vlog based on giving advice to my 13-year-old self. When professor Sidibe told us about this, I honestly wasn’t sure how I would face this assignment because the thought of filming myself made me feel uncomfortable. However, I came to realize that this wasn’t so bad because it was only 5 minutes. I found it to be somewhat therapeutic because I had to put myself back into my 13-year-old mindset in a sense and give advice to my own self. I would say being able to do a vlog as my first time is spontaneous (if you watched the vlog, you’ll get this reference haha).
What I struggled the most was facing the camera. It felt so awkward and unnatural to me that I was watching myself talk into a camera. It felt like someone else was watching me, but it was only me of course. Also, I had a hard time voicing out my thoughts properly. There were a lot that I wanted to say but writing them out seemed a lot easier than vocally expressing them. I thought the editing process was a bit simple because I had the clips of what I wanted to say, and I just had to merge them together for a video. I underestimated the difficulty of this vlog, at least in my opinion, but I have this video as a checkup for my self growth in the nearer future ;P.
