Summary & Response Essay Reflection

The assignment was to write a summary and response essay to the essay “Black men and public space” by Brent Staples. First, we are to summarize the essay and then write an answer to if you agree or disagree with the authors claim. The author is trying to tell the reader how dark skin color people are always being misjudged. To support the claim, he uses many situations where he was misjudged in a wrong way due to his skin color. I used the example where someone assumed, he was a rapist while he was walking in the street and when his co worker called the cops on him thinking he was a burglar. These two situations clearly show how black people are always being misjudged. This essay was mainly for woman since it was published in “Miss Magazine” but also for any non-dark skin people. The genre of my writing is op-ed because the writing was opinion based. In the writing I was using first person language. In my writing, I come across as a normal person standing up to discrimination because I am supporting Staples opinions. Throughout the paper my tone is calm. The format is correct and I do not think I need to make any changes on my citations

My Academic Habits( Journal 1)

According to pages 45-52 of the Norton textbook, Academic habits of mind are to engage, be curious, be open to new ideas, be flexible, be creative, persist, reflect, and take responsibility. I believe, I have almost all the academic habits of mind. Especially in being curious. I am a very curious person. For example, if there is something that intrigued me and will like to learn about something, I will do my research on the topic and ask questions about it without hesitating. This also leads me to be open to new ideas and engage because by asking questions I am opening to others and willing to listen to what others have to say on the topic. Another academic habits of mind that I have is being flexible because I can adapt to things very quickly. For example, it took me about a week to adapt to college life whereas to it takes certain people about a month to do so. All the other habits are not hard for me, but I believe I can improve on being creative. Sometimes my mind freezes when trying to generate new ideas about a topic.

Sometimes, there are some types of work that I do not like doing but I still do it because the outcome of me not doing the work will always affect me in a negative way. For example, we were assigned a reading for the next class about a topic that I despise the most, but I will still do it because I will be unprepared for the next class. Also, being unprepared makes me feel left out because I do not know what is going on in the class. But coming into class prepared is completely opposite. This makes me feel motivated to participate in class because I know what is going on in class.

What makes me feel good about myself when it comes to schoolwork? Simple getting a good grade. This means that we are leaning in the class and that is the reason we come to school. To get myself going in school, I think about people were became success in life because at one point in their life they were just like me attending school and educating themselves. This gives me hope that one day I will become a successful man and make my family proud. One tip I will give to the younger generation is that makes friend and be very outgoing in school because this can help you later on in life.

Evaluating Credibility (Journal 4)

After reading the UnSpun by Jackson and Jamieson, I have learned that to evaluate information nothing can be trusted without the facts. Like anecdotal evidence are never reliable because it can come from a persons perspective not what actually happened. For example , Terry Maple believed that Crows used moving cars to crack walnuts because he coincidently saw a crow doing it. But after the years of research it was proven that it was never the case because the research outcome was that they drop walnut anywhere even at the roof and etc. To evaluate information, you have to first see where it came from and are they reliable. Basically you are are checking if the source is credible or not. Also have they provided enough evidence to back up their claims. An example of people making claims without any idea would be when a claim made back in 1982 that more than 3 million Americans were homeless. When the person who made the claim about it and he said the numbers were “meaningless”. Meaning he just came up with a number. This a example of unreliable source because he did not know what he was talking about. We have to be careful when evaluating a source especially with how credible the source is.

Change in my writing approach (Journal 6)

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