Six-Word Memoirs, Five days a week taking the transit, Four courses, Three months, Two phases, and one semester.This is not a summary of what happened throughout my first semester at UBC (just for fun).
The first semester at UBC is the starting point, the transition from high school to university. In terms of adjusting to University life, everything seems to fall into place at ease. The choice to do the Coordinated Arts Program (CAP) under the stream of Global Citizens further helped the transition (as I was told that it would). However, the expectations I had in terms of academics differed, and the transition of the first semester helped provide a basic foundation of what to expect for the next term.
In ASTU class we read scholarly articles and extracted the “gist” of it out, summarized it, learned to research and use it to orchestrate voices to conduct literature reviews. Explored different types of life narratives: Persepolis, a graphic narrative, God Grew Tired of Us, a film documentary, What is the What, a novel and autobiography. Contemporary online forms of life narratives as well from blogs (Salam Pax and Riverbend) to Six-Word Memoirs to PostSecret. The style of life narrative was only one aspect that we looked at in each individual texts, it was for me, the content that mattered. I felt that through each piece of text I got the chance to time travel to places that I never though I would be able to go to; see life through the eyes of each individual of the texts. To say that I went through the first semester of ASTU or any of my other courses without being changed physically and mentally would be a TOTAL LIE. University, for all us is life changing, we are all in our mind writing our own life narrative while we live through it.
At the beginning of the semester, reading the scholarly articles, there was a particular style of writing that I thought at that time I would not be able to possibly do. But through ASTU class, we acquired the scholarly method of using reporting expressions, abstraction, big issues, levels of detail, etc. to construct introductions and conclusions that fit the scholarly method. All of these techniques not only help with university writing in the long-run but it makes me a better writer. First semester though in acquiring the scholarly method felt like trial and error. But one particular goal that I was able to somewhat achieve was refining my topic, ideas, claims and coming up with a definite argument. It was through aspects of the scholarly method (reminding myself what is the SO WHAT?), constructive criticism from my peers, T.A`s and professors that enabled the progress I have made in writing papers. I am glad that the first semester was where I realized and progressed so that in the future years to come of my university career, I will be able to focus on other aspects of writing. So in the next term, I`ll continue to tackle papers with specificity; being concise, coherent and relevant (all because of ASTU).
Lastly, I constantly remind myself that everything happens for a reason and that I will not take everything for granted. I believe that everything I learn in the past, the first semester of university, and what there is to learn in the future shapes who I will eventually become. Therefore, even though the first semester is over (almost, after the exams), I cannot wait until what next semester has to offer! For now, we must study hard for exams then relax and chill out through the holiday season, so that in the new year of 2014 we`ll be refreshed to tackle everything that has yet to come.
