Hello! My name is Sarbia Carmona. I go by she/her/hers pronouns. Currently, I am a History (BA) Student, set to graduate in 2028.
Fun facts: I’m a New York City native; born in Manhattan, raised in the Bronx. I’ve watched Hamilton twice and met one of the actors! I enjoy listening to many different genres of music. From The Beatles to BTS to Ozuna, I will listen to it all! Some of my all time favorite characters are Snoopy and Kermit.
Self-Assessment Essay
Throughout the course of the class, we have had three major assignments: the Trans-Cultural Interview Essay, Field Observation Essay, and lastly the Literature Review Paper. There are multiple components of the writing process and artifacts that have helped me develop my writing in this class. With the use of these artifacts, I have been able to further improve on my writing skills. As well as challenge myself and gain new insight into fresh styles of writing. \
To begin, our first assignment was the Trans-Cultural Interview Essay. For this assignment, we were supposed to interview a friend or acquaintance that came from a culture different to our own. One of the artifacts that helped me with this assignment was the Subject Description. I chose to interview my friend Lynn, who is Puerto Rican. For the Subject Description, I had to write what I already knew about Lynn. In a way, the Subject Description helped me self-assess myself and really forced me to think about what I already knew about my friend as well as what I wanted to learn. Another artifact that helped me with this assignment was the Trans-Cultural Interview Questions. For this artifact, we had to produce questions we wanted to ask our interviewee and bring them to class for peer review. In doing so, I had received feedback from two of my peers. They had recommended me to ask Lynn to introduce herself as one of the questions. Other than that, I received pretty good feedback that made me feel more confident about the questions I wanted to ask. The third artifact that helped me with this assignment was the Trans-Cultural Interview Transcript. This transcript helped me a lot when writing the final version of the Trans-Cultural Interview Essay. With it, I was able to refer back to Lynn’s answers to my questions. Also, I was able to recall her body language when I had asked a specific question. Since I had a physical version of her answers, this helped me learn more about how she felt about the topic of women’s gender roles in Puerto Rico and the kind of language she used when talking about it. These artifacts helped me improve on my skills and overall, I had fun conducting the interview.
Our second assignment of the semester was the Field Observation Essay. We were instructed to conduct a non-participant observation of an online community. I had chosen to see r/financialindependence. At first, I was not sure of to start the assignment. The Field Observation Summary was an in-person observation we had to conduct. This artifact helped me ease into what an observation should feel like. I noted down the behavior of people around me and what the environment felt like. For the second artifact, I chose the Subject Description. Since I do not know anything about finances, writing the Subject Description helped me get a sense of what content they discuss. Through this I could also do a bit of background research before diving into the actual observation. The final artifact that helped me with this assignment was the Field Observation Notes. For the field observation, I focused on the F.I Daily Discussion Thread. I noted down the time of the observation, what users were talking about, and their responses to each other. During the observation I had to hold back from wanting to reply to one of the users. In the last version of the essay, I quoted the users and what they said as evidence to prove the respectful nature of the community. This assignment was a bit challenging for me as it was a fresh style of writing for me. But with the help of these artifacts, I was able to further build on my writing skills.
Our final assignment of the semester was the Literature Review. This had to be by far the most challenging assignment for me. The first artifact that helped me tackle this was the Literature Review Paper Outline. The Outline helped me map out the format for my essay and what to include in the Summary and Discussion & Evaluation sections. Prior to college, I would not use outlines at all. But for a paper of this length and level of scholarship, I found it extremely useful. Another extremely useful artifact was the Annotated Bibliography. To form the Annotated Bibliography, I had to use the CCNY Library database to find peer-reviewed articles that spoke about my topic of abortion in the United States. The class we had in STC-3 with one of the librarians also helped me learn how to navigate the CCNY Library website. Writing the summaries for 3 of my sources and connecting them to my research question helped me when writing the Summary part of my final paper. Finally, the Multi-Modal Translation was the final artifact that helped me. For this artifact, I chose to make a magazine article. I was able to present my research in a visual manner that helped my audience understand how far back the issue of abortion in the United States goes. The Literature Review Paper was a new style of writing for me. I was not confident in the first draft I had turned in, but with the help of these artifacts I was more confident in the final version of my work.
These artifacts helped me tackle the different assignments during this class. While drafting my works, I did not think of how they helped me improve my writing skills. But upon reflection, I realized I gained valuable skills that I will be able to apply to future works I produce.
