Core skills

Written Communication

"The learner will exchange ideas and information with others using written text in a manner effective and appropriate for the intended audience."

For the Written Communication core skill, I decided to go with my report paper from ENG-112, which I took in the Fall semester of 2020. A class I had taken during my sophomore year of high school, it was a class I was intrigued to take, especially since I took its precursor- ENG-111- during the summer of the same year. The format would be different of course, considering that for ENG-112 there would be scheduled meeting times (albeit virtually due to the pandemic), but I was looking forward to that greater interaction for more feedback on our written work. Writing, to me, provides a different pressure from the usual test-taking, a pressure that leaves me with a greater sense of drive. As such, I was really excited at the prospects of continuing to hone my academic writing despite the enhanced rigor of it compared to my normal high school English classes. The purpose of the report was to attempt to identify to the audience the issues of diversity within the art industry. With it, I had not only found the problem to span multiple aspects/mediums within the career field, but also span across different cities, states, and even countries.

My initial goal of this paper was to create a body of work that had a natural flow, where the content was being organized in not only an understandable manner, but one where the points were effectively placed. Upon a general observation of my own writing throughout the years, I tend to be quite wordy. The wordiness lends me the benefit of descriptive detailing, but I am aware that it can also cause my writing to be too long-winded and thus confusing to follow. My report required me to lay down the issue clearly, but not abruptly. It made it so that I had to balance out emphasizing the importance of the issue, while also trying to not add so much emphasis that the original point was lost in the conjecture. Looking back I believe I was able to successfully do such. I recall plotting out what I wanted to say in my report on various sticky notes and flashcards, physically laying down my plan to see if the information listed simply just looked right. From there I deep-dived into heavy research so I could properly support my points and adjusted said details as I went along. By doing that I was able to create a smooth reading experience in my report, and laid the groundwork for a much more refined writing process I still use now.

The second goal I had wanted to accomplish with this report was to make the information being presented engaging to read. To put it simply, I did not want to bore the reader, as while the arts industry has a special place in my heart, I had to be aware that others might be more neutral to it. While perhaps not the perfect solution, I utilized my knowledge of language to weave a report that was a good balance of informational yet “vivid,” This was an academic piece, so while I still had to properly represent the information, I still wanted to write something that did not drag on. As such I kept my examples varied, and only repeated them if they added to emphasis and not redundancy. By picking a topic I was genuinely interested in as well, I hoped that people would see my own passion in the report as well and get the sense of the gravity of the issues I was presenting in my piece. From this, I learned when to push and pull in writing, and the importance of word choice and sentence structure.

In the essence of the paper, I really did have the realization that the people behind the arts industry were not evenly represented, that minorities were being shadowed and harder to find. It put a little bit of a damper on me seeing those statistics. However, it only fueled me to perhaps tackle this issue in the near future and motivate my own passion of becoming an artist. The industry needs as much diversity as it displays in its body of work, and when writing this report I knew I wanted to be that one extra person to nudge those measly statistics up some. Perhaps I will directly not use this information later on, but I want to passively instill the fact that it is possible for everyone to truly have a place in the arts. I do not remember my grade for this assignment, but the value it still gives me in motivating me to continue my dream is very much there. It might not be the most beautiful finding in the mosaic shards I picked up and added to my collection- it is rough and a little jagged from bleakness- however, what I learned with this assignment is something I intend to keep for a long time.

Oral Communication

"The learner will exchange ideas and information with others using the spoken word in a manner effective and appropriate for the intended audience."

While slightly unconventional with the core skill of Oral Communication, I chose to use my recorded presentation from my PSY-241 (Developmental Psychology) class. I had taken PSY-150 (General Psychology) in the fall semester of my sophomore year of high school, and I found it oddly fitting that I took this class in my senior fall semester. This presentation was our final project in the class and the only presentation we would ever do in the whole 16-week course. We could choose to present any topic that we covered in the course, and I had chosen to talk about “Adolescent Alcohol Use,” I went over general statistics of how many those underage drink, who typically is at risk for alcohol consumption underage, effects it has, preventative measures, and a whole lot more. This Developmental Psychology class was fully online, so to do a more interactive final project, no less a verbal presentation was daunting to me.

Oral presentations have never been a personal strong suit of mine, I tend to get very nervous and subsequently talk fast; despite that, I ramble on even in a more scripted setting, leading to a weird effect where I am visibly nervous yet still going on and over-explaining! Worrying that those two bad habits would lead to a messy presentation, my first goal was to not overdo the presentation content-wise in order to avoid unnecessary rambling. Of course, I had to sufficiently cover the topic to the best of my ability, but I needed to give myself a manageable amount of work. Using my now well-loved tactic of physically jotting down main points onto a scrap piece of paper, I roughed out an idea of how my presentation would flow. With this being a PowerPoint instead of a paper I was keeping myself mindful of how much information I put on the slides, as too much content on a slide would have looked messy. Going through that motion I made the rule of if the slide was simply getting too stuffed, I was either going overboard (and thus needed to cut down on content) or needed to give that certain aspect of alcohol use in teens more emphasis. By the time the actual presentation part came by my PowerPoint was appropriately optimized and I kept right to my needed points, without deviating much from what was seen on the screen!

My second goal was to simply convince the audience (via the delivery aspect of this assignment) that I was knowledgeable on the subject. This goal was more so intended to me to successfully get through the presentation the cleanest I could, without sounding out of my depth. Sounding that way, even if it may be due to performance anxiety or nervousness, is not wrong at all, however, I wanted to challenge myself and give listeners the sense that I knew what I was presenting to an adept level. As such I remember flipping through the slides multiple times to be more aware of how the information leads into each other, and I recall moving around slides too once I realized some points were more punchy when placed with other slides. After that, I gave myself a couple of trial runs to verbalize what I was going to say in a no-consequence context. I would quickly mutter the slides on my first go around just to get a feel of it all, and from there slowed down and even had practice recordings to ease myself into it. During all of that, I corrected the slide information if there were any errors and fixed parts so that they would roll off the tongue easier. While I believe I still sounded nervous, a lot of this preparation resulted in a product that turned out better than I initially thought!

From this final project, while oral communication is something I still struggle with and probably will continue to grapple with, I learned a lot of techniques that helped me better prepare to orally communicate to an audience. A lot of it really just involves slowly simulating the presentation first, and naturally getting a better sense of preparation for what I needed to say. While in my future career endeavors I will be working primarily alone, there probably will be times where I need to pitch my artistic ideas to clients, and as such doing mock presentations to not only keep myself organized but calm was a nice skill I picked up in the Developmental Psychology class!

INTercultural Competence

"The learner will demonstrate cultural awareness and objectivity through critical reflection."

Finding an artifact for this one was a bit of a tough pick for me, I was not sure of which would be the best fit, but in the end, I decided to go with my cultural paper from SPA-112. While I had taken its precursor, SPA-111 synchronously online, I chose to take SPA-112 fully online asynchronously for 16-weeks in the Spring of 2021. This semester in general was very difficult for me, but going online for Spanish eased the load quite and bit, and this paper was one of the better moments in an otherwise very challenging semester. While this paper was specifically for the ePortfolio, I remember enjoying the research process of it all, as it actually analyzes Vietnamese culture, specifically, the Vietnamese New Year (otherwise known as Tết). It is a holiday I cherish a lot, and in a bid to give it more formal research, I decided to write a paper on it while also touching on the American New Year’s and its traditions as well.

As Vietnamese culture was something not entirely unknown to me due to growing up with it, my first goal was to properly convey the importance of my written subject area via accurate research and portrayal of said topic. I believe I achieved this as I recall not only asking my own parents about the history behind Tết, but also consulted many sources (and utilized them consistently) in my paper. Some of the source authors themselves were Vietnamese as well, which bolstered their credibility to me. While I do celebrate Tết, I was also aware of my lack of full understanding of the entirety of both the holiday and my own culture. I live in America after all, and the experiences I have here are a mix of American and Vietnamese culture, the latter of which I really only get at home and in limited quantities outside of that. As a result I was very conscious of how I wanted to tell of Tết’s importance, and hammered down frequently that it was not only a major holiday for all Vietnamese people, but one that held a lot of cultural significance as well.

My second goal stemmed from my first goal and that would be to substantially analyze both the culture I was writing about in my paper (Vietnamese culture) and American culture. I wanted to do this to provide readers with that contrast in cultural differences, but also show that despite the differences, some things remain the same too. Overall, in my mind, that would help readers better understand my information, and avoid coming out with the notion that this culture, different from what they knew, was entirely foreign or ‘alien’ at worst. I achieved this goal by dedicating a section of my paper to the ‘traditional New Year’ after giving readers an overview of Tết. There, I had myself come to learn about American culture, and later, decided to add a paragraph on my own observations of similarities and differences with both holidays. In some ways, this paper was about the New Year’s most of us are familiar with just as much as Vietnamese New Year’s.

By writing about both holidays, I became aware of the broadening-world view this paper not only gave me, but possibly the readers too. Culture, and the mix and matching of culture, is something I grow up with- which really means that I was making this metaphorical mosaic before I even knew about the concept of one! By giving that collage a more formal lens to it I was able to create this paper that allowed me to better understand both parts of a major holiday I grew up with. It aided me in my understanding of the broader world, and the interconnectedness of it all as well, and I think that is quite valuable to me in the grand scheme of things. What I am pursuing down the line will most definitely force me to find connections like these and make meaning out of them, or force me to use my own sense of self to provide my thoughts and ideas. By writing this paper, I think at the time I came to better understand myself as well.

Information Literacy

The learner will locate, identify, evaluate, use, and disseminate information ethically and responsibly.

After a bit of back and forth between my files for potential candidates, I eventually picked my informative speech’s annotated bibliography from my COM-231 class. An in-person class I had taken in Spring of 2020, the class was eventually switched to a virtual format due to the pandemic in March of that year. We had actually only made it through the first day of our Informative Speech, before the news that we would be online struck. What were whispers of the possibility of a brief break from in-person class from both the college and high school side turned out to be a year-long one, with us only returning in the Fall semester. Even then, the pandemic still rages on and its effects are still visible now. While the pandemic affected how I had to present my informative speech, the content was already planned and finished. My annotated bibliography for this speech was my favorite to work on in the entire course even though it was though the concept of making one was quite new to me. The subject I had picked was something I had been watching with great interest since the 7th grade and something I still find fascinating even now- this being the boom of Korean culture in the West. Being able to academically research that particular topic, I had to tackle the subject matter more analytically; I simply could not just pick sources willy-nilly and leave it at that. With our annotated bibliography we not only had to correctly cite 5 sources but also write summaries of the content of said source which included an analysis of their purpose and how the source would help us.

Sourcing itself was simple enough, however, paired with the analysis aspect of the bibliography, my first goal was to simply be able to properly select sources that would best aid in not only my speech delivery but also in conveying the informative aspect of the speech. While I had been used to finding sources before, I wanted to do it more intentionally this time. By putting more deliberate thought into how the sources would aid in the presentation of my information, I was able to achieve this goal. I kept in mind what type of source I was using, whether they were a news article or an academic journal source, and tried to keep the variety of sources split as evenly as I could. Not only that but I recall looking through the various SPCC library databases in order to cast a broader net of credible sources and ultimately obtain ones with varying pieces of information to present.

In tandem with my first goal, my second one was to find sources that provided me with a variety of talking points in my informative speech. I wanted to talk about the wave of Korean culture within the West, yes, but I wanted to give the audience the full picture of how it came to be, the history behind this wave, and who/what was leading it now. I achieved this goal by researching exactly that. Within my research I found that Korea itself somewhat intentionally started the push of their culture as a form of “soft power” but that it eventually morphed into a tsunami of its own. With the help of the digital age and its growing streaming culture, the “Hallyu Wave” as some call it, became a behemoth. It was an interesting topic to me personally, and I wanted to provide the full picture just to give those who were not familiar with the phenomenon to truly get maybe why I found it so intriguing in the first place. By finding sources that covered its past, but its influences, how other countries had viewed it, and its future trajectory, I had managed to create a strong set of sources that I believed would not only inform but intrigue my audience of this complex puzzle.

This assignment was one I really took a lot of joy in doing. Research, while usually a frustrating part of the academic writing process, is one I typically enjoy a lot! I find it fun scouring the different databases to read how each source may benefit me in its own ways. There is a sense of satisfaction I get seeing the various pieces in a collage of sources come together in a cohesive work. Doing this bibliography I learned the greater importance of finding not only credible sources but optimal ones, sources that- personally- could enhance my work to its fullest potential. It took a lot of time evaluating each source, and then writing how each one could help, but by putting conscious thought into it, I gained a lot of passive knowledge in proper source finding and utilizing.

Critical Thinking

"The learner will identify, interpret, analyze, or synthesize problems before developing and implementing solutions in a manner effective and appropriate for the intended audience."

For the artifact related to Critical Thinking I decided to go for my endocrine lab sheet from BIO-112. A class I took in Spring of 2021, it was a 16 week hybrid course that I took practically fully online. I knew doing so would impact my experiences in the learning process of the class, possibly making things harder for me in a class I had already worried about in the prior semester due to its difficulty; however I chose stay ‘fully virtual’ (with synchronous lectures) still in this semester too due to my dad being immunocompromised. With the pandemic being so rampant back then- and even now frankly- I personally wanted to minimize as much contact I had with people as possible. This virtual lab titled “Endocrine System- Effects of Blood Glucose Level” is one I decided to showcase here as my dad is diabetic. Working through this lab on the Connect website reminded me of how my dad has to monitor his glucose levels, and how sometimes my mom and I have to watch over him on longer trips outside in case those levels dip as well.

The first SMART goal I made for myself regarding this lab was that I needed to be able to discern various factors within the lab and be able to pick apart the effects each had on the experiment overall. Doing this was simple, but I wanted to not just breeze through the assignment, but fully come to an understanding of what exactly I was changing and how. Our subjects in this case were (virtual) fish, and we were given two substances to add into the fish’s water, glucose and insulin. After reading through the initial protocols, I went over the descriptions embedded in the lab about the elements and went about the lab. It had seemed simple enough, but I wanted to confirm that I was understanding the effects properly, and fully achieve my goal and so I went back and reset parts of the virtual experiment to confirm what I was seeing the first go around. Indeed, by the end of that, I was able to see that insulin would lower the blood glucose levels of the fish and adding back glucose would have the inverse effect.

My second SMART goal was to grasp enough understanding of this topic to be able to apply it in real-life situations. Seeing as my dad has to monitor his glucose levels in case they get too high or low, I found it important to really understand the technical aspects of it all, the actual science behind it- to be better prepared in situations where his blood glucose levels are not normal. In the virtual exercise after noting down the effects of the substances, it proposed to us a question, whose answer, in turn, helped me achieve my goal. The question was actually drawn back to a real-life “What-if” in that it asked what a diabetic person should do they feel dizzy, shaky, tired, and so on. After some hesitation due to the differences from a fish to a person, I drew back from my own personal experience and answered that the person should eat or drink something that contained glucose, which made me realize that I achieved my goal as I had come to a point in understanding where I could draw conclusions and apply them to real-life solutions.

While this lab was a minor one in the grand scheme of things, it was one that I can still remember quite clearly working on. While they were just fish, virtual fish, in fact, I was able to put my observational skills to good use. I even was able to draw this lab and its problems into my own real-life and accurately draw those solutions from the lab into real-life solutions. Fish or not, giving them hypothetical insulin or glucose, these little steps, problems, and solutions aided in my problem-solving abilities. Not just my academic problem-solving skills, but my real-life skills as well.