Unit Reflection and Response
1. Include the link to your blog here: https://poyin.home.blog/
2. Which of your pieces most helped you identify or explore and develop your God-given abilities? Discuss.
The pieces that most helped me identify or explore and develop my God-given abilities was, I think, the restaurant review. I think that I’m better at describing things and doing reviews in general (I did well on the other reviews from last semester too). It allows me to give my opinion about something in an interesting way and I also really enjoy writing them. I think I’m just naturally more observant (which is something that people used to tell me) and so it means that I can write more about my experience of going to a restaurant and eating there and remember more vividly what happened.
3. Which of your pieces best demonstrates your ability to communicate effectively? Give three reasons and explain.
I think that the piece that demonstrates my ability to communicate effectively is my research paper. After making some adjustments to it, I think I was able to be more concise because I eliminated any unnecessary details from the paper. I’m also someone who tends to ramble a lot, even in my writing, which means that I end up saying more than I need to. Since this piece is not one that I would explicitly state my opinion in (rather, the thesis statement and my arguments act as my argument), I think that another reason would be because I am able to be much more concise than when I am trying to state my own opinion. Lastly, since the research paper had a specific word limit, I had to force myself to write less and to make everything more concise instead of just writing on and on about one scenario or past event. Because of that, I was able to communicate effectively.
4. Which piece either demonstrates striving for excellence, or discusses striving for excellence and its importance in another area besides writing? Explain.
I think that my research paper was one of the pieces that demonstrated striving for excellence. This is because I put a lot of effort into making it the best possible version of a research paper that I could. I remember reading things over and over again just to make sure that it sounded right and that everything fit into place in the paper. I would spend a lot of time finding just the right research to support my thesis and that would add to the essay and how people receive it.
5. Which of your pieces explores why it is important to act as a responsible member of the global community? Explain.
I think the piece discussing the Prince of Morocco’s racial situation is the closest to exploring this ESLR. There have been recent events that would have made me write the essay a little differently and maybe take a slightly different stance than I did in the essay. I think that it discusses what racism is and how it is still prevalent in society today. Even though I don’t explicitly talk about what we should be doing or how we should be acting, I do discuss how people today are being affected by it.
6. How did this course help you to know, understand, and apply biblical principles? Explain, giving specific examples.
We did a lot of reading, especially this semester. For example, looking at The Kite Runner, we can apply biblical principles of redemption and compare it to the book’s worldview of what redemption is. While the characters in the book see redemption through trying to do good things to make up for what they did wrong, we see it as something that God will forgive us for if we ask Him for forgiveness. Through these different readings, we are able to see how the writers’ worldviews are different (or perhaps similar) to ours and how we would approach these situations.
7. How did this course help you to think independently, creatively, and analytically? Explain.
There were a lot of different types of writing that I had never done before, like the different reviews and the CREDO presentation. This helped me to think more creatively as it made me learn how to write outside of what I was used to. I had to think of creative ways to express my ideas and thoughts rather than by using the conventional essay. I was able to think independently since most of the work that we did was independent. For example, when reading Shakespeare or The Kite Runner, I was able to form my own opinions and independently analyze different books or writings. When we write these thoughts and analyze the different topics within the books, I am able to think more analytically.
Link to full Unit Reflection: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ds-LK4wqPFFLEd1Mhjnu1Tsv5Kh0Mna4ES5DxjCyYoA/edit?usp=sharing
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