When I first came into this class, I was not sure about what to expect since I did not know much about Social Sciences, and I did not know how to write for this field specifically. However, as time went by, I understood how Social Sciences worked and how collecting and considering different sources of information, considering other’s point of views like entering a subculture as an insider or outsider, and discovering new ways of knowing and understanding cultures and events would tremendously help my writing as well as my understanding of Social Sciences. I did not only understood the role of Social Scientists, I also improved my writing by making it more concrete and using other writing resources that helped me develop a better sense of what academic writing looked like, as opposed to the informal writing I was overly exposed to.

An area in which I’ve made progress this semester in my writing is in the adaptation of description and concrete language to help me convey a better understanding of the subject to my audience. One-piece that shows how my writing was weakened without the incorporation of detailed and concrete language is when I had to write about my reaction to the Marshmallow experiment. I wrote: “Throughout the video, it could be seen the skillful ways in which the kid tries to entertain himself, to keep his mind away from wanting to eat the marshmallow.” I could have been more specific about those “skillful ways” I mentioned since somebody who did not watch the video would not know what I was talking about. A piece of writing that shows how I have improved with the incorporations of this descriptive language is when I wrote my reaction to the NYT profile we were supposed to read; Here I talk about how an illness transformed a man’s life physically and psychologically. I wrote, “He went from being well, to having his body deteriorated, losing the consistency of his lips, and being left off with no upper or lower limbs in his body, just because of a simple bacteria.” Here I show rather than simply mention the physical transformation this man experienced due to his illness through the use of description and concrete language. In this particular case, I felt like I was able to negotiate my writing goals and audience expectations since I was focusing on what correctly was being understood in my writing. 

Another common problem with my writing at the beginning of the semester was the organization of my ideas. I was not sure about how to make my writing flow, which often led me to write vague statements that mislead the direction of where I what I wanted to be understood. An example of this is in one of my free writes about Martin Luther King and his opinion of the role that Social Scientists played during the Civil Rights Movement. I wrote, “Social scientists did not get involved in the issue that was present in society. He proves this by providing and stating the problem, how society was divided, and how much people suffered.” While looking at this piece, I realize how much my writing has improved since I individually feel that I was running in circles while not even be able to tell out a simple idea. However; as the course went I was able to learn how to use my language within a particular context, and even though I did not know much about social scientists when I first wrote about King, I believe that with this skill I would have been able to articulate disciplinary writing based on his opinion. An example of imy improvement n it is in the free-write we did about Didion during class, where we were to figure out the “How it felt to me:” of her writing. I wrote, “Throughout her essay, Didion questions the reasons as to why she gets to the conclusion that she does not keep a notebook to have an accurate fractured record of what she has been doing or thinking, but to remember where she has been, compared to where she is going. “That is always the point.” Here I was able to be more precise about what the writer was trying to convey, and the use of abstract language was minor than the first example. 

There are countless areas in which I have made a significant improvement in this course; I learned how to observe and take notes, attention to details, and wondering why things happened made a significant impact in the way I wrote and in the development of my understanding in the Social Sciences. I started with weak writing, that was not concrete and ended up strengthening my writing and conveying my idea with a stronger voice. Now I feel like my writing can be heard. I also learned to find reliable sources and use them appropriately to the specific writing I was doing, for example, here at the CCNY library, which is a skill I will use throughout the years I have left off in college, as well as everything I have learned in this class.