Reflection Letter

Hello my name is Rachelle Dott and this is my second quarter at Everett Community College. I have lived in Washington pretty much all my life. I lived in Bothell until I was thirteen then moved to Arlington which is where I currently reside. When I met my husband, he was living and going to school in California. So, after we got married I got to live in San Francisco for about year. California was such a great learning experience for me as I was away from my family and friends. It was extremely difficult at first but after awhile it was nice to just be by ourselves. Fortunately our adventure away from home didn’t end there. We then moved to Spokane while he went to school for a little over a year. Now here we are back on the West side and happy to be home. I plan on continuing my education at Everett Community College and eventually transferring to a University.

During this quarter, I learned a lot about identity, community, and tradition. Before this class I had never really thought about them too much. I have always just accepted them for what they were. The discussion boards really helped me think outside the box. My most memorable one was from Intermission One movie talk on “Akeelah and the Bee”. During that discussion I learned that a lot of people who have talents feel like outsiders because of what the people who are considered “insiders” do and say. I realized that this happens more often than we think and that is causes the “outsiders” to feel ashamed of their talents. I was able to reflect on some of my own experiences when I would have been considered and outsider or an insider. For example, when I was in middle school I loved The Beatles. I was clearly one of the only ones at my school who did. People would come up to me and drill me as to why I loved them so much. Then they would go to their friends and snicker about me.

As you will soon see, I have chosen four pieces of my work from English 101 Diversity. The first piece I chose demonstrates my critical thinking skills. This happens to be our last paper on tradition and it’s titled “Very Sexy”. The second piece I chose was from my first paper called “Paper Talk”. I chose this for my skills at revision and re-seeing my work. My third piece illustrates my awareness of audience and voice. For this I chose one of my posts from our discussion boards from Intermission One. The movie being discussed is Akeelah and the Bee. My last piece you will see is one of my favorite writings and that is why I chose it for our writer’s choice. This is from one of our timed writings from Intermission two. The movie being discussed is Lone Star.

Overall I feel I made some nice improvements with my writing in this class. It was interesting to go through some of my old writings and compare them to my more recent writings. I hope you enjoy reading my E-Portfolio as much as I enjoyed putting it together.