Hello! My name is Rafsan and after having gone through another semester of remote learning. I just want to say I honestly hate it. It is already hard to focus when I’m physically in school, so imagine my life trying to learn at home with my family around. I’m pretty sure it’s not just me but regarding the circumstances, we all have to make the best out of them. Oh, right! Back to the main topic at hand, writing. Writing was not always my strong suit. No matter how intelligent one is, without proper writing to explain yourself, no one can properly understand your thoughts. I’m better at writing works that are tied to scientific research, so I wasn’t that comfortable at the beginning when we were told this class was going to focus on the study of human society and its personal relationships. One of the things I enjoyed the most about this class was the fish-bowl discussions, and what made it so interesting was the fact all my peers came from different backgrounds and they each had their respectable views on the topics. I saw how powerful writing can be as social instruments of justice and how much freedom writing gives. Writing is powerful and can cause an eruption of different views to flow out just based on one work. From the most recent fishbowl article, as I read the comments on Cathy Park Hong’s paper, I saw that there were people both praising her and also critiquing her for views. One person was very adamant about the fact that the pangolin joke (“How do you eat a pangolin anyway? Do you dip its scales in butter like an artichoke?”) Cathy made, left a bad taste in her mouth. These jokes we make are in fact a reality, as exotic animals are still used for medicinal purposes across Asia. The commentator made it very clear that this nonsense needs to stop. It is cruel and is not a “Joke from a conversation standpoint either.” Another commentator agreed whole-heartedly with Cathy as during these times we need to look out for one another and not spread hate/racist remarks around. Both of these comments are heavily supported by the internet and just show how one writing piece can provide with it a lot of mixed views, as well as promote social justice, and hopefully change the views of people for the better. Another aspect of the class I liked was the fact we had a lot of freedom in terms of choosing our topics and that made writing fun. Writing can’t be forced and even I can’t sit down and tell myself to write about a topic I have no passion for. 

The research we have done for this class has shown me that without proper evidence, it is hard to persuade anyone. As I was researching I made sure to get multiple views on a subject because that helps to clearly see the bigger picture. It can even be helpful in order to create rebuttals to the claims the opposite side holds.

As we learned more about marginalized societies we also learned about the struggles certain marginalized societies face. From just having a different skin color/background or gender people are treated differently. What is worse is that people from marginalized communities sometimes have no voice or outreach so they are just stuck in a cycle where getting people to notice or get some kind of help is hard. I have had friends get pulled over and restrained with force just because of their skin color. My friend was still attending high school during that time and was only a sophomore. He later talked about it in a podcast format to the class and it really helped people change their perspectives that police violence can happen to any African American individual, no matter their age. Through writing can we help others see that change must be brought to these communities and this will allow for change and better opportunities later on also.