Over the past 12 weeks, this class has helped me refine my writing skills, while also learning to think more critically and in depth about social issues.
In Unit 1, I was moved by the articles we read of those who had experienced discrimination in the workplace based on their arbitrary traits. I found myself drawn to the article about individuals in the workplace who have disabilities. Having worked with children with special needs and my sister who is a severe and profound special education teacher, I connected the most with this article. This inspired my work in Unit 2, as I wanted to dive into this aspect surrounding the workplace as I am approaching the period in my life where I will be entering the workforce.
Instead of focusing on the general discrimination by people, I decided to focus on the built in discrimination against those who have a disability — the design of institutions. This became more difficult to research as the specifics of what I was looking for were harder to word. I had to filter out disability caused by the workplace, and find sources regarding resources that those with special needs require and if the workplace has fulfilled those needs. I layered my research by also bringing to light policies that were in place to help those who need assistance.
When actually conducting my research and beginning to plan out my project, I used what we had already learned in the course to guide me. I was influenced by the power of rhetoric, the importance of writing genre and specificity over generality to guide my writing. What is a topic most people forget about? What is something that would create a call to action? What will make my audience think critically and deeper, like I have?
I learned that writing does not always have to be informative with a formal tone, and something that is tedious. Rather, I came to the conclusion that it could be an expression of how I felt, and read almost like a journal of my internal thoughts. I found myself looking for comments from my peers, excited to see what they thought of my work and what they also learned from what I spoke about. I found myself looking through everyone’s responses and interested by what they found or took from the same piece of work I read. Did we view things the same way? Did they pick up on something I missed? I am normally not good at receiving feedback, however the criticism I received shaped my own writing from an outside perspective.
I found that it was important to listen and read the comments left on my post, as these people were my target audience. If what I was saying was too wordy, or harder for them to follow, I would go back in my writing and create a more concise sentence, or completely reword an entire paragraph. This in turn taught me that an outside perspective is just as important as my own, and representing these two ideas although difficult, creates stronger writing skills.
Most importantly, this assignment pushed me to think about other social issues. In the time period we are living in currently, there is a greater emphasis on viewing an oppressive system and bursting the bubble that I live in, even though I am not aware of it. Just as I have educated myself on racial discrimination in our system, I decided to educate myself on an issue that I have not yet thought twice about. Although I am an ally, I did not realize that I was not doing my part, when I have a voice and the ability to. In doing so, I realized that I enjoy conversational toned writing and I find that that is the style that I can truly express who I am and my unfiltered but filtered thoughts. This course and assignment taught me to truly think about topics that need more coverage, and do the work myself in order to not only critically think about myself, but the society we live in.