Sofhia Juliana

Hi, my name is Sofhia Juliana Jaime

...yes, my name has an f and an h my mom wanted to make sure I was a special butterfly...

      The majority of people call me Sofhi. If you would like to call me by some interesting variation of my name, I do not mind at all, I actually encourage it.

      Before UTRGV I went to Sharyland Pioneer, I live In McAllen and I go by she/her. Since I was a little girl I have been crocheting, but recently I have started to work on some bigger projects, I have made two sweaters and two blankets throughout this quarantine, right now I am working on a blanket. 

      So super recently they added the Cybersecurity Major and I plan to peruse that path and maybe work for the FBI or I would like to go to South Korea and work in an entertainment company and secure all of their devices and such. Why South Korea you may ask, my boyfriend lives there and I miss him terribly.

      I have a really big family and were all really close. I am especially close to my older sister she is literally my best friend. I do not have any pets, but I desperately want a hamster. 

     Right now, I am working as a Bite Squad delivery person, forget about Uber eats and GrubHub trust me Bite Squad is much better. Also, I am a “teacher” at Mission High school, I work with the marching band specially I work with the Color Guard. I am only 19 and I got this job right out of Highschool, though right now because of COVID I am not working, and I really miss my kids. 

I am really going to miss this class. It was actually really fun. Also, I am turning in everything on time so that feels much better. Feels more like me.

I do not know if you know how much of an influence you have on your students, but I just want to thank you for your kindness and your patience.

Even though we did not have a lot of time to actually talk but the small amount of time we got to talk during our conference really helped me. You really put me at ease, and I am really happy to have had you as a professor.

So, thank you again.

I do not know if you follow any religion or anything, but I hope you have a blessed life and that you continue being a wonderful professor.

I could not get myself to do the end reflection. I could not sit down open word and type. I did it all late and I was not proud of what I put out. I felt really bad for writing it. I felt bad that you had to read it. It was just bad all around.

Sorry.

Also my weekly reflections keep getting shorter and for that I am sorry as well but I feel like I have run out of things to say.

So, I will tell you what I have going on.

Slow is not part of my vocabulary. I have resting guilt. Which means that if I am not doing anything I feel very guilty. Even if it is for my mental health or whatever I just have to always be doing something.

So, I have taken up some new hobbies like embroidery, crochet, doodling, yoga, meditation, and high intensity interval training. Even when I have nothing to do, I pack my day with obsolete activities so I do not feel bad for chilling.

Though when I do finally take the time to slow down, I take way to much time. Like I mentiend in the previous reflections I felt really bad for turning things late and I did not turn anything in. we had the SOGC and it was so easy and still I could not get myself to do it!

So, to be honest I did not look at any of the feedback that was in my lesson plan remix discussion board.

Is… is that like… bad?

I got really lazy at the end of this class. not that I was not enjoying the work and stuff, but I just hit a wall. I had no motivation for anything, like I did not even go to some of my classes and I even skipped lab. Of course, that decision is going to bite me in the butt because now I have to take an exam fro that class which I know very little of. So, yeah.

But the feedback I did get directly from the prof. was not helpful… per say. He was like~

“Oh yeah you’re doing great, you kinda just need to work on your flow but you’re writing is good.”

Which you know is great news, that means I’m doing good right? But what can I do to be better? Give me the run down, the nitty gritty you know? Still, I take what he says into consideration. I look back at my work and give it a quick scan. Making sure to look for the flow simultaneously thinking of “flow” and what that could possibly mean.

As I’m reading my stuff I kind of see what he means. Like some sentences do not seem to be in the right place, and like I still do not know where I commas go. But do I fix it?

No.

Again, I read keeping in mind the “flow” when I realize. That it sounds pretty okay, but like only to me because that how I think. I have learned that I think in like run on sentences, also I do not complete most of my thoughts, and I kind of just say random things that I think make sense.

Which is why I NEED feed back.

I would just like to say that this was the first remix I had ever done. Like. Ever. I think we were meant to do this in my last English class but like COVID, so we did not get to it. so, when the professor was like~

“Oh well you did this in your last English class so it should be easy.” I was lost. Like big time lost. I was super nervous to like accidentally do it wrong. When I finally did it, I was nervous to see what the Prof. was going to say about it. I got so in my head I lost motivation to even do it. like I turned in all of my final work late. I am not that type of person. Also I felt really bad, I felt like I was taking advantage of the professor cause he was so chill like I mean.

So, I ended up making a PowerPoint and a lesson plan.

Which worked out in my favor because that is what I have been doing for the entire semester with my Korean class so I thought it would be the easiest thing to do. when I finally turned it in I felt like I was on top of the dang world.

THEN.

Am I the only person who loves to conduct research? Is that like… a me thing or is it actually fun? I do not know but I really enjoyed doing research. even before we had done the lecture going over how to do it I had already started. Let me tell you eager is an understatement. I was so excited to finally have an excuse to talk to the authors I follow and ask them about their experience. I do not even know how I managed to handle this but I was extremely excited.

I LOVE learning new thing, but also at the same time I like already knowing things. If that makes sense? Also, this project helped me open up a bit. Usually, I am not the type of person to initiate any type of social interaction though any social outlet. So because I actually had to reach out to new people I became a bit less awkward than I normally am.

Even before I had college I liked to do research, I would talk to my friends who were interested in English and they never really talked about doing research, they usually just talked about writing their own books and coming up with stories and all that good stuff. For the most part I could not relate. I like to think that I have a pretty creative imagination, but my imagination goes as far as real life things. Like making my own world? Me?

Osea no.

I feel like that made that made me second guess my own ability in writing because I never really fit into the typical “I love writing” persona thingy. Writing non-fiction is still valid.

Revision is my now one of my favorite activities, revision is where I get to learn from my mistakes and clear any misunderstandings that are littered throughout my works. Revision is where I think I shine. I love going back and making my point more compelling. I love beefing up an essay. Out loud making an argument is not my strong suit but once I begin to write I feel like I have the ability to move masses.

Like the majority of people ( or at least I think the majority ) I feel like I have a very solid base of knowledge of most things and I do not like it when people go against what ever it is that I am saying. So research or argumentative essay are my favorite thing to write. Especially, if I get to conduct my own research. like heck bring it on.

To be frank there really is not much to say about revision, it just something that must be done. You just have to know what is wrong with your paper, like what if you spelled something wrong, or if you put a comma in the wrong place. this is an imperative step when writing for any forum, in any medium. Like I do not think that taking a risk on an essay is worth it. there is just so much that can go wrong.

Feedback, feedback, feedback. Why?

“Let your peers read your works, it’ll be fun…”

Well you know what? It actually was very fun, I was paired up with Victoria I think and she was really sweet. I think she was writing about music therapy and I found her topic to be super interesting even though her paper was very short. I have been relying heavily on feedback because I am dyslexic, and I apparently do not know where commas go having someone read over my writing has been imperative for my growth. When I do ever write outside of school I send my first draft to two of my English major friends and once they are done of course I read over their corrections and see what I can look out for in my future writing.

While I was in high school, I was super insecure about my writing. So, whenever we did peer review in class I got really nervous because I felt like people would think I was dumb or something along those lines. To combat that I remember that I used to pretend sometimes that I was so that people would judge me less harshly then if I were “smart”.

Though doing that ended up causing me more harm than good. I ended up hindering myself and I wasn’t able to learn as much as I could. I made up excuses and stuff for no real reason. Looking back on that I realize that I am the person to blame from my short comings.

It is what it is.

I just want to say that I really don’t like drafting paper. 

Why? 

No se.

 It annoys me to no end, like why can I just write a perfect paper in one go? Unfortunately, the writing gods just do not like me. Since I can remember I have not liked writing. I find it difficult to express my thoughts out loud and in writing though I do not really know why. I have an extensive vocabulary, I know how to speak multiple languages, I do not think I have any social setbacks. So, subpar ability to speak confuses me. Though I choose not to dwell on it.

Creativity consists of many different things. Creativity also is not limited to self expression which is what I think most people view it as. I feel like people forget of the logical, analytical people and how creative they truly are. I started college as an engineering technologies major, though high school I took engineering classes and the main theme of each of the classes I took was creativity. How can my creation be better than the rest.

Another this that people overlook is creativity in problem solving. Personally, when I see a problem my brain looks for all the possible solution. My favorite example of this was this one time in high school.

So I had first gotten reading glasses and I did not really care enough to put them in their case so I would just stuff them in my back pack and dig for them when I needed to read something for class. it was around the end of the day when I was finally going to need them. So, I take them out of my bag and I notice one of the lenses had fallen off. I look at them carefully to see why it had fallen out. On the side of the empty lens I see that the screw was missing. I knew for a fact that I was not going to find the tiny screw in my messy bag, so I asked my teacher for a pass to the nurse since they keep extra screws for glasses. So, there I went leisurely walking to the nurse’s office hoping to fix my glasses.

I get to the office and hand the head nurse my slip, she reads it over and asks me to sit as she goes to get the screws. After a few seconds of searching the nurse informs me that she thinks she gave the last one away already.

So I looked back down at the drawer where she had all her supplies and my eyes settle on the dental floss. I asked her for a short piece of floss. She hesitated not really understating why but still she cut me a small piece. I then took my glasses and placed the lens back in its place and asked the nurse to hold the wire around the glass as I threaded the floss in the hole where the screw was and tied a tight knot holding both ends of the wire together.

People forget that there are multiple solutions to the most common problems and that creativity stems from every single medium. Anyone can be creative.

This is the reflection artifact and explanation

So, in this submission, I put what I think would be my finished artifact, aside from the lesson plan I wanted to make the corresponding PowerPoint. I was trying to show how writing fanfiction can be beneficial for all types of writing. By using it as a method to teach writing I students will not only improve but also be more interested in the English language and writing.

First, I started with my essay. I just started to write fanfiction as an escape from my daily life. As I continued to write, I noticed my academic writing began to improve exponentially. All aspects of my skill were elevated and the stress I felt when writing had dissipated. Once I heard that we were going to start on this project my mind instantly went to fanfiction. Even before I had this project, I discussed with some fellow writers how fanfiction helped them and how it is stigmatized and what not. Which made this a perfect topic for me.

Soon after we started, I began my research I gathered a few of my favorite authors and conducted a small survey. Even before we had talked about how to do our research. Oppositely, I conducted another survey of people who do not write or even read fanfiction to see their blind opinion towards this medium. I was not surprised with the results of the survey. Most people said they found the writing to be immature and poorly written along side other typical negative stigmas that have been characterizing the works. Finally, when I was able to gather all the information I all seemed to fall into place. Both of the surveys confirmed my hypothesis.      Which lead me to create the lesson plan and PowerPoint for my remix.

“When one chapter closes another opens.”

I would like to start off by saying thank you. I have learned a lot throughout this class which I think will help me greatly though my career and the other blog I am Admin of. The writing process used to be something I dreaded and I have realized why. I used to see writing as a all or nothing, like I had to write my entire essay in one go and it had to be perfect. In reality writing is a step by step process. Like all other things, I was able to talk to you about my out of school hobbies and I realized writing, I exactly the same as making a sweater. I do not just make a whole sweater in one go. I make the sleeves, then the back, then the from and then I add the borders and all the extra decorations. This class has taught me to take a step back and look at the process. 

I also learned that feedback is not something I should be scared about, no one is going to judge me, and more than likely the peer reader is just tryin to help me. While writing the essay and coming up with the artifact I found them to be a bit different. I enjoyed the essay much more than I did the artifact, I had a lot of inspiration when I was writing the essay, while the artifact I have very little motivation even though it was a much easier project then the research project.

I think back to the beginning of this class and I believe week three was where I saw one of our references that really stood out to me. You had us watch a Ted Talk about sourcing. I had never really given a thought to how much someone's word can impact the integrity of a story or essay. Of course I know that was I say can impact other and such but I just tend to disregard the sources where I get my information. Obviously, there are such things as fake news and misinformation and I just took what people told me as truth. The Ted Talk got me to think before I instil the information I am given. This heavily influenced the way I conducted my research why I conducted a survey and got my information from primary sources. 

Then with my artifact I thought it best to find a way to help. I, (for some reason), have a lot of friends who want to teach English either as a second language or to college students. So I thought that this would be a good way to get students invested in writing and learning. Though the multimodal element I thought it to be a little difficult but that will hopefully become better in time. Being able to show this information to a plethora of different types of people. 

I think I am going to cut this a little short at least for now. Though I think I will try to update some more little bits and pieces of my brain to further explain my journey through this class. 

So for now I’ll keep it short and sweet. 

I head that it killed a cat once.(!)

What drives my curiosity? 

In all honesty, I don’t think I can tell you exactly what does, I just know that it does. Personally, I am not a very curious person. I tend not to ask many questions. I just usually let things exist in the state that they exist in and if I happen to stumble upon the explanation for something then i will do my digging and get the information I am curious about. Though there are times when maybe I start something new, or I get a new interest then I will look for the information I need. 

For example-

Did you know that when you are burning fat, the fat escapes in a for of gas called carbon dioxide. Which means that your breath out the fat in your body. Weird right? I would have never guessed.

According to my family though I don’t find interest in things I should.  Like our family past, or programming, or basically any other thing that seems to be mysterious. This is also present in my relationship with my friends. I think I am not a great conversationalist. I do not really ask many questions I just kind of get the information from them and I let myself make my own opinion about it. Curiosity is something I have not let myself indulge in, though I really believe I should to help with my relationship and get a new outlook on life. 

In my remix, I want to convey the fact fanfiction is a valid form of authorship. Most often this medium is just very undervalued and I feel like it should be recognized as a valid form of writing and should be treated as seriously as any other form of composition. I would like to focus on the input of the actual author's input because I feel like this is more compelling since they are actually living with the consequences of the negative association of this medium. The intended audience for my remix is teachers who are struggling to get their students invested in writing or reading. I think that writing fanfiction would be a very interesting way to get students invested in their writing, since this media can be derived from any outlet of entertainment I feel like this could be an effective way to peak student interest. I think the best way to go about this is to turn my essay into a lesson plan, to show what aspects of writing can be improved with this medium of expression. I feel like the lesson plan can show educators another way to teach plot, characterization, grammar, etc. to students.