32Q:

Ava’s Fall 2016 POL 32Q

     During this semester I have grown and improved in many ways, from improving my use of literary elements to establishing the HOHAM in all of my work. In many ways this year I have developed and enhanced my skills, but the three that I have changed the most are; leadership skills, intercultural understanding, and finally using organizational writing patterns to inform or persuade an audience.

  1. Application of leadership skills in Take Action Ecology group project.​
     In the duration of this semester I have gone through many processes of strengthening my leadership skills. In the Take Action Ecology project I applied these skills to create a strong infographic and written proposal. My leadership skills were a strong asset in the completion of this project. When we chose to divide up our written proposal I helped facilitate the division in order to equally share the work. Other than taking the lead on dividing the work, I also helped with many creative elements. During the creating of our infographics I felt that I had strong ideas that could make all three of our infographics. I helped choose the color scheme and design elements in order to create a strong and cohesive group of infographics. When it came to certain aspects of this project I believe I was able to take the lead in order to create the most beautiful work possible.
  1. Using intercultural understanding in Artifact #6 to include accurate perspective and ideas in an abstract fashion.
     Throughout this semester I have applied many skills in my humanities artifacts. I feel that one of the most significant skills that I utilized was intercultural understanding. I used this skill in the completion of Artifact #6. For this artifact we were to asked to explore a tension regarding the American West in a specific writing style. I decided to write a ‘conversational’ poem examining the tensions of space and place using the concepts of the East and the West The intercultural understanding of the East and the West in the past and present helped me develop writing that had both truth and imagination. I was able to understand the differences that reflect in the social positions and statuses of all sides. By using intercultural understanding I was able to have more perspective and a deeper understanding of my topics, while still including a creative visualization.
  1. Incorporating organizational writing patterns to inform or persuade an audience.
    In the last few months I have completed an application for the JDRF Children's Congress. In the process of accomplishing this application I had to make a persuasive claim as to why the U.S. government should fund diabetes related issues. To make this claim I utilized the humanities skill of organizational writing patterns to inform or persuade an audience. I was able to use this skill in order to portray influential and determined ideas. In my writing I manipulated the tones of the piece to play off of the pathos of the readers.  When I wrote my piece I utilized strong skills by using writing patterns in order to persuade and inform an audience.

​2 Things to Work On
  1. Lack of depth in explorations of a subject.
     I hope that in the upcoming semester I will be able to go into more depth when exploring both assigned and individual subjects. I felt that I lacked this skill in one of my latest projects in Advanced Algebra. I was tasked to find information about the logarithmic scales of music frequency. Once I had this information my partner and I had to share about our topic to our class. We needed to have enough data and understanding to help others understand the topic. As we concluded the project I felt as if we had not gone in depth enough in our study of the scales. When we had to deliver our presentation we had good information, but it was scarce. One of our main talking points was how, “the higher the frequency the higher the pitch. The pitch slowly increases as the frequency increases. The Pitch is the Log of the frequency. Even though there is such a high frequency  difference, the pitch only changes a little bit from each note.” This talking point covered much of our research, but lacked depth. Due to the extent of the general information about logarithmic scales that is available, I do not think that we went deep enough to get a solid understanding of this topic. In future projects I believe that I can go deeper in my explorations. I believe that I will be able to achieve this by, first finding a baseline of information to go off with. I then believe that I can expand my research off of those topics in order to go deeper. I feel that using these tools will help me achieve more depth when exploring  subjects.
  1. Analysis of images and text in order to comprehend the internal and external messages.
    In the last semester I feel that one skill that I have been lacking in is the analysis of images and text in order to comprehend the internal and external messages. In humanities we were asked to select one of three given images and analyze the scene along with finding a “truth of war” that the images reflected. When I started this artifact I was only doing what was asked. I looked at the image and only analyzed the basic information. I felt that I did not go into much depth with finding the message of the piece. I only looked at the external messages. In the upcoming semester I will look deeper in my analysis of images and texts and look at more surrounding context in order to find the meanings of pieces both internal and external.
1 Big Question to Ponder
How can I search for individual opportunities to challenge myself to further awareness, knowledge, and enhance my skills?

Evidence

Artifact #3 Thesis

​With the use of ambiguity in his portrayal of the main character Zits, Alexie successfully creates an antihero travelling through a life-changing world searching for forgiveness.