The first Transformative Learning:
First I want to talk about our class topic, the social construction of gender values since we are discussing and analyzing the social construction of gender values from week 1 to week 10. Through a particular assignment in week 1: Exploratory Writing: On Social Construction, I first learned about the term: social construction and how social construction affects the people's values about gender role. After finishing and learning the social construction of this assignment, I will manage my own behavior in the daily life because my behaviors are affecting the others every hour and moment.(Below is a screenshot of my own work in week 1 assignment: Exploratory Writing: On Social Construction)
The second Transformative Learning:
Then I really change my opinion about the peer review and team work through working with my group, or having small group discussions with my group members. In week 6, four classmates and I were working together to create our own final podcast and microsite. At first, I did not want to discuss with my group members and I thought that I only needed to finish my part of the job and sent it to the podcast editor and the microsite editor. However, I could not solve all the problems of our podcast and at that time, the discussions with my group members and the suggestions I received from them really help me a lot to create the podcast and to finish my own work.
The first Problem Area:
The first problem is my own writing issue that sometimes the vocabularies and the phrases of my work are not appropriate or even too vague and subjective. This will make my essay harder to understand and less technical. In the future, I will definitely pay more attention on words choice and avoid using too vague and subjective words in my essay when the readers of my essay are my classmates who might have a different thought and opinion.(Below is a screenshot of my own work and the underlining sentences on the right is some important advice of my professor.)
The second Problem Area:
The second problem is a combination of apathy issue and time issue. In Week 4 Exploratory Writing: Star Wars and Gender, I did not want to watch and annotate the whole film about Star Wars because I have few interest in the Star War genre. That led to a very time-consuming situation that I did not even start watching the film until 4 hours left before the due of this assignment. I stayed up late for the whole night to finish the task and that made me very exhausted. In the future, when I meet some topics of the assignments that I am not very interested in, I should start to do them early and do not procrastinate.
Hello Zebang! As you mentioned that time management is indeed a problem all people need to pay attention to. Delay will not only affect our working progress, but also affect the quality of our submitted works. Like you, I should also pay more attention to time management. It’s a great honor for me to in a group with you for peer review. I expect you will have a wonderful life in next quarter.
Hi Zebang, I still remember commenting on your very first blog and now it's already the end of this course. It was so nice seeing all of the hardworks you did and the reflection you made. I'm sure after finishing this course, you will do better in vocabulary and grammar. Hope you keep on doing the good work!
Hi Zebang!
I also had little interest in Star War films. And neither on Marvel. But when I was pushed out of my comfort zone by the assignments, I found they were pretty inspiring. They showed me how Americans' values were, no matter they were positive or negative. As long as you try to discover something, you will uncover something. Plus, I appreciated Antman I after that week. This science fiction was really cute and full of fantasy. I regreted I didn't go to the cinema as it was first released.
Good luck with your finals!
-Tianai
Hi Abe! I remember we met each other because we were both a bit nervous about this class in the beginning! But we have made it through! For your problem about word choice, I have the same problem as well. I guess that's because we learn most of our vocabularies by rote memorization as non-native speakers, we don't quite understand how we should use the words in the correct context. I think massive reading can help to solve this problem! It's great to have you as my classmate in this class! Hope you succeed in the future study at UCI!