Thanks to the COM352 students for contributing a bunch of new pages! I'll be moving these pages into the main area of the wiki soon.

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[edit] My Writting

[edit] Homeless

I was lost after school without my babysitter Svetlana. This was the most traumatic experience of the seven years of my life. I was stranded in a big market all alone, all I remember is spilled milk on the sidewalk that was running everywhere and closing in on me. I didn’t realize I was crying until I was made fun of by a group of teenagers, who always mistook me to be older than I was. All of a sudden a place so familiar to me was no longer the place where I walked through everyday; I was panicking.

I lost my recollection of my walk home, all I remember are tears burning my eyes and preventing me from keeping them open. The fear of being one of those homeless children that I saw on the subway in Kiev was occupying my mind. I walked though construction, over a bridge, and somehow ended up in front of our building. As always the elevator was not working and I ended up walking sixteen flights of stairs filled with used needles and occasional druggies whom those needles belonged to. No one opened the door to my house, but the elevator was finally working, so I returned outside in hope of finding Svetlana; she stood in the sunset crying.

This was the first genuine hug I have given her in the past six month. In that period of time I had been waiting for my mom to pick me up from school and take me away in her little red car. As I would come down those stairs into the lobby filled with parents, my eyes would be searching for my mother. She always stood out of the crowd; at the age of seven I never realized how beautiful she is. My mother could be spotted a mile away. I looked for her long and bright red hair and her red lipstick, but always ended up spotting Svetlana.

As a child, I had never been this disappointed and upset. I would cry and tell Svetlana to leave me so my mother could come and get me. I would cry and start hyperventilating and wouldn’t be able to stop after the half hour subway ride. I despised Svetlana. I always assumed that she wanted to come and get me instead of my mother. I realized at about eight the Svetlana was paid to come and pick me up and stay with me and my sister until eight or nine when my parents returned home.

After my parents would get home, we would eat dinner and I would always be in trouble for something that I did to Svetlana. This cycle continued for about one year. I had never wanted to see my parents like I did when I was seven. Work was their life. Our evenings as a family always ended up in fights, our parents too stressed and tired would simply send my sister and me to sleep for fighting all the time.

Eventually, at the age of eight, I accepted the fact that my parents’ priority was work and finally gave into Svetlana’s genuine nature. After all the fights and tears, I grown to love her like my mother. I no longer could wait to see her after school and finish all my homework and engage in a fun activity that night. Most of our fun was interrupted at night by my parents, now I wouldn’t want Svetlana to leave. My parents became the people that made me burnt breakfast in the morning and the ones that would yell at me for loosing the remote.

The year after I went to fifth grade, my last year of school in Ukraine, my sister and I were informed of Svetlana’s termination of our babysitting. I could not imagine my day without her. My sister and I cried and cried and then I realized that Svetlana was no longer there to tell me to do my homework. She was not there to tell me not to use any of my school notebooks for school as a sketch pad, and she no longer came to get me after school. Instead of searching for my mother, like I used to, I searched for Svetlana and would never see her. I forced myself to hold back my tears as I left school all alone.

Svetlana’s leave was the first time that forced me to manage my own time. I had to learn to spend my time beneficially and not to waste any resources. I consider this my first step into adulthood; this period was the most crucial in my life. I had the taste of freedom of making my own choices. This was yet another time of change for me; I vowed to never cry in public again. This was the ability that most adults had, and since I was on my way of becoming an adult I made sure I acted like one.

That year my dad moved to US alone first, in order to later have us join him in the summer. My mother was working at home and was finally spending time with us. I still loved her, but I was confused about her role in my life. Secretly I would dream of Svetlana as my mother; she always loved my sister and I like her own two daughters. I still remember the first time I came home and found my mom’s shoulder to cry on. I will never forget her warm lap and how she hugged me, she actually hugged me for the first time when I really needed her.

After moving to the US my first meaning of family formed. We no longer had our grandparents and the four of us were the only family to each other and we did get along the first year in the US. The next year, however, was filled with my father’s idea of going back to Ukraine and his pressure on my sister and me to study Ukrainian subjects while in US. I struggled to rebel against my father’s rule and found myself in a constant fight with him.

In eighth grade my mother took a job in Washington DC while my sister and I were in Amherst with my father. My mom never explained why she agreed to take a job that far a way, but me and my sister suspected our parents having issues in their marriage. While with my father in Amherst, for the first time in four years I felt like he was interested in having a relationship with me. We actually hugged for the first time in six years (birthdays and holidays not included) and were enjoying each others company.

We bought a digital camera together and had a photo shoot – one of the moments I will never forget. This was one of the times I thought I thought that a relationship between me and my father could be fixed. After the four years of him not treating me like the little girl I have always been, I was sure he was just making up for his emotional absence as a father. My parents resolved their issues; my mother came back to Amherst next year and everything was back to the way it has always been – chaos.

I never understood why my parents were so much better with their children while separated. I had never been that happy with the relationship I had with each one. Perhaps my parents were unhappy with their life and when combined together they took it out on my sister and me. A marriage is one relationship that has to have the two people involved bring out the best out of each other. My parents were not that couple at that time, all their negativity would transfer on their children. I will make sure to have better parenting skills that my parents had and to never have my kids experience the better side if their parents separated.

I made a promise to myself to never forgive my parents for emotionally neglecting me once they were back together. For the next three years I did everything bad I possibly could without any feeling of guilt. My mother hoped that she could make up for all the days she didn’t come to get me after school. We moved to another apartment complex and she started working from home. My sister and I were to still too fat for my father; he made sure he expressed his ‘concern’ every time we ate. Everything returned to normal.

I cared about what my father said until I was about fifteen; then I realized if I don’t let him break me down he will only make me stronger and he did. Although his negative comments were all I heard, I knew he suffered the same growing up with his difficult mother. Now she has never been this proud of anyone like she is of my father, her older son, doing the impossible in her Soviet-made eyes. I realized this is the only way he knows how to care for us and that he has never been exposed to any other way. He is exercising what he is taught, my grandmother was taught by the Soviet Union, fear and negativity was the only inspiration and stimulation known to people. My father is a product of his time and there is no way he can control that.

I realize that I do have a cultural barrier between me and my parents. They were taught absolutely one way and I had been exposed to so many different possibilities. I have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and make sure that I never make them. Now being older I can analyze their behavior by looking at the history of the time they were brought up in. Slowly I start to forgive them and let go of old grudges.

Still, I can not remember the last time that my father has said “I love you,” I guess I even stopped caring. I hate my father for not finding those words in his vocabulary. Just like he hasn’t found those words for me, I still wait until I have enough in me to just say them and hug him. So far he is the only person that I have trouble expressing my feelings of love to. I struggled to let people know how I felt because of my father, but I fought that fear of rejection and overcame it to realize that saying those three words is the most amazing thing one can say and hear.

My mother although always being caring has always been a mystery in my eyes. I always have the feeling that when she says one thing but she is implying the exact opposite. When I do point that characteristic out, she tells me that I am trying to put words in her mouth. All I ever wanted to understand with her is what is really trying to say and why she won’t just come out and say it. That is why I am always straight forward and want everyone to know exactly what I’m saying. I never want to have misunderstanding, like I do with my mother.

I do not expect my parents to change, but I expect them to look back and learn from the past. I hope for them to see who my sister and I turned out to be and accept us for what we are, not what they have wanted us to be. I hope one day my parents realize that my rebellion was a mission not just an act. I have many more missions to make and goals to reach, but I hope these missions do not have to do with them. I hope they can give into my nature and accept the person I have become. I am simply a product of time and their marriage.

[edit] Unit 1 Reflection

Dear Mariya,

The first piece of writing I have done in college was challenging. Due to the increase in quality demanded from the students at college there were many challenges I ran into. While my main problem with grammar and punctuation was still present, I ran into many other issues including the context of my writing and the actual structure.

My main issue was very vivid in my writing was the lack of organization and clarity. Although this is an aspect of the writing that is important, it is not as crucial in high school level writing. My paper needed more organized structure; there is a need for chronological organization. In much of my paper I do not specify my age and therefore the timing of the story is quite hard to follow. Due to the lack of these tools my writing is not connecting the ideas stated properly. Therefore the second draft will be organized more clearly and will contain a clear structure. The ideas and the main points of my paper will be much easier to follow and the confusion of time will be gone.

The second main issue in my writing is the lack of actual analysis and the conclusion from this analysis. Since the paper is about identity there is a particular story told that leads me to an analysis of that situation and then a conclusion is drawn to that situation that ties the piece all together. My paper is missing the small ideas that make the big idea/conclusion much more powerful and educational in a particular way. An example of that is the title of the paper that is supposed to be connected to the piece in which my piece it is quite hard to draw out the title from the actual story. I need to be clearer and relate my stories with that idea and in the end clarify the connection between the title and the conclusion.

An avoidable mistake that could be fixed in my paper that I have done with all my writing is repetition. This is when peer editing is crucial because not always is someone able to see the repetition in their writing. Since I did not have any peer editors, I was unable to spot that aspect of my writing. This is another problem I must work on and really read my writing carefully and make sure to spot such things as repetition. Nest time around while self editing I will look for this mistake and make sure that I do not repeat it.

The most frustrating aspect of writing for me is the limit in my vocabulary. This is a big problem in writing since that is where much of the repetition comes in place. I need to develop a much bigger vocabulary that will ensure much more freedom while writing. Even though the process of widening of vocabulary is a strenuous process, it is one worth the work.

The second draft of my Identity paper will be much more structured and most of all clear. There will be no questions left to answer after reading this essay, everything will be spelled out and the analysis is clear and somewhat concise. I will make sure to look up synonyms of words that are overused and get repetitive. I will make sure that I do this, now that I am at college level of writing and there is a much higher expectation from the students.

[edit] Unit 2 Paper

How to Tame a Wild Tongue by Gloria Anzaldua is a story about a struggle made by many people living in America, known as Chicanos, who are neither American nor Mexican. Anzaldua describes the Chicano’s struggle of identifying a language called Chicano Spanish. She talks about the struggle of identity and nationality of Chicanos. The question of identity through language is vivid, as author explores the idea of a ‘non-existing’ language being the identity one has; Chicanos expressing themselves through Chicano Spanish. If Anzaldua believes language to be used as identity, then a multi-lingual individual is identified by the languages exposed to them.

Anzaldua states, “My “home” tongues are the languages I speak with my sisters and brothers, with my friends.”(Anzaldua 167) I will apply that example to my own life. I speak Russian with my family and I speak English with my friends not including the Ukrainian which I struggle to remember and use since moving to the US.

Russian and Ukrainian are the two languages spoken in Ukraine, my birthplace. Ukrainian was made the national language after the fall of the Soviet Union. The national language during the union was Russian, and since after the fall in 1991, almost everyone in Ukraine knows Russian. Although I was born two years before the Soviet Union’s fall, Russian still played a big role in my childhood. This was the language that I spoke at home and Ukrainian was the language I spoke at school with the teachers or during class, during lunch and recess everyone spoke Russian to each other. The two languages from my childhood are the languages inherited from my country’s history.

My parents are proficient in both Russian and Ukrainian, but have the thickest ascents while speaking English. I on the on the other hand do not have an ascent in Russian or English, but can no longer remember Ukrainian but still I am able to comprehend. I speak Russian with my parents, but find myself talking in a mix of Russian and English with my 21 year old sister, who is like my parents, proficient in both languages but has a slight ascent in English.

So far my life has been written in three different languages, none of them I am best at. “A language which they connect their identity to, one capable of communicating the realities and values true to themselves – a language with terms that are neither español ni ingles, but both.” (166) Anzaldua is talking about Chicano Spanish that is a combination of both English and Spanish to identify Chicanos. Although Chicano Spanish is not considered to be an actual language, there are Chicanos that are able to exercise their language in their own comfort. They have a language that identifies them, but this language is looked down upon by many people.

I struggle to express myself in both English and Russian. Both of the languages are difficult for me to write in, and completely express my thoughts in. Since I was young when I moved here I lost my ascent within two years and sounded American. There are many days I wish I still confused Vs with all Ws, a common mistake made by Russian/Ukrainian speakers, and sounded like I did when I moved here. I take pride in the country I came from, but at what point am I no longer Ukrainian? Does the fact that I no longer sound Ukrainian make me still one?

“Yet the struggle of identities continues, the struggle of borders is our reality still. One day the inner struggle will cease and a true integration take place.” (Anzaldua 173) This struggle Anzaldua talks about is similar in Chicanos and people from the countries from the Soviet Union. The national language of the former Soviet Union countries were denied and forced to speak Russian. The people’s identities were taken away by the government and then after the fall these identities were given back. My parents were born during this period and have multiple languages as their identity, both Russian and Ukrainian. Chicanos have their own language to back up their identity although many do consider this to be an invalid language; Anzaldua disagrees, “Chicano Spanish is not incorrect, it is a living language.” (166) this is the language created by this unique group of people in order to understand each other and to communicate. Me and my sister speak a mix of Russian and English and that may upset my parents, but that is the language that is easiest for me and my sister to communicate in. We speak this language to understand each other, like Anzaldua says, “a living language.”

Chicanos struggle to define themselves within borders. “Deep in our hearts we believe that being Mexican has nothing to do with which country one lives in. Being Mexican is a state of soul – not one of mind, not one of citizenship. Neither eagle nor serpent, but both. And like the ocean, neither animal respects borders.” (Anzaldua 172) Having been raised in one country part-time and then being exposed to another does give me borders but does it give me the right to pick one over the other? I want to say I am Ukrainian, but that does not seem valid since I spent the last seven years in the US. Am I considered Russian since that is the language I speak with my parents?

“I have so internalized the borderland conflict that sometimes I feel like one cancels out the other and we are zero, nothing, no one.” (173) I am no longer Ukrainian neither American; there is not enough credibility for me to be either Ukrainian or American or even Russian. Is Anzaldua right, are we then just a zero. If we are a mix and can’t identify, then are we a zero? No, I am a product of all the languages I know. “So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity – I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I can not take pride in myself.” (Anzaldua 170) Although I do not have one language, I have three to form the identity that I am. One part of me is Russian, another part of me is Ukrainian and the third is American. Although I am not proficient in either one, all three of them complete me as an individual.

I am all my languages.

I am Russian.

I am Ukrainian.

I am American.

[edit] Unit 4

Любовь зла, полюбиш и козлa. (Love is blind, and you may fall in love with an idiot. -an old Russian saying)

Interracial relationships have always been a subject for scrutiny. Even in a country such as United States which is a melting pot of the world, interracial couples still struggle to find acceptance from family and peers. I, Mariya Boryssenko, a Ukrainian who grew up in American, am completely in love with Kofi Frimpong, a pure Ghanaian. Everyday I am faced with Kofi’s acquaintances. I can hear them talk about me as I leave the room. I can see them talking about me to their friends as I walk on campus. I am constantly reminded of the difference in our appearance, our skin color. And yet we are able to maintain a happy relationship and forget about our surrounding when around each other.

I have a very different way of reacting to what others say and do than Kofi. When we were walking in the library he ran into this girl that he was once in African Student Association (ASA) group. We were holding hands and he said hi to her. She looked at me and her mouth dropped as though she saw a ghost. She pointed her finger at me and tried to get the words out of her mouth, “Is that your girlfriend?” He said yes and just pulled me along. I was in shock, in fact, I am still recovering from that incident. I, to this point do not understand why skin color must dictate who we love. Is our skin color meant to put us into groups of whom we may love, whom we can’t love?

I faced my second encounter of being targeted for my love again in the library. The ASA girls tried to bring us down again, except this time one of them kissed Kofi. Although I was mad and felt like running after her and slapping her, I didn’t. He was by my side, holding my hand. I hugged him right then. I felt his heart beat next to mine; his eyes met mine. I have a heart and he has a heart. I am a human and he is a human.

We are two humans in love.

I told him to wash his face off and he did. We now know to just love and not let anyone get in our way. Now if someone tries to interfere, we can always overcome them and just concentrate on our happiness ignoring the negativity and letting it slide.

My mother was right in saying that love is blind and you even can fall in love with an idiot. I believe this Old Russian saying has everything to do with my struggle of fighting for this love that is not accepted by all of society. Love does not consider the society’s expectations, love strikes you when you least expect.

I believe love is blind.

[edit] Final Reflection

Writing in my first college level class has been a process that I decided to relate to learning how to use a sewing machine. There are multiple steps involved in both writing and learning how to sew on the sewing machines. There are many knobs and dials that regulate certain features of sewing; this process I related to me adjusting, learning and understanding writing at a college level.

The basics parts of a sewing machine are a bobbin, so first I must learn about the bobbin and how to put it to use. The sewing machine uses two threads to make a stitch, bobbin thread and the main thread. To me the bobbin represents all the knowledge I brought to college from high school about writing. I personally did not learn much in high school about writing a paper for the purpose of connecting ideas to the writing, I was taught about rules of grammar.

As I read Unit 1 Reflections of people in our class I found out that mostly everyone was taught to write about context and not taught the rules of grammar. For example, Ksweets writes, “Reading my paper now, I see how many grammatical mistakes I made. As I stated earlier, in high school we didn’t focus as much on grammar as we did on context.” IceCreamMan is another student that agrees with Ksweets, “I feel as though, grammar usage came into play a lot more in college, when I was in high school, I never had a paper picked apart with a highlighter so bad.” As for me, I still struggle with both grammar and punctuation. I noticed this trend in all my papers. I believe a great deal of this comes from English being my second language. While editing my papers I am unable to see these mistakes automatically.

The next sewing tool I learned is threading the sewing machine with the main thread. On average there are about six places and hooks that the thread must go though to finally reach the needle. I relate this learning process to the first basic tools taught to us in a college level writing course. In particular, writing Unit 1 paper. Due to that fact that I just switched into this class two weeks after it has begun, the outcome of my final draft of Unit 1 paper was much worse than I expected. I believe this paper was intended for us, students, to begin to find a relationship between our thinking and our writing.

Threading the machine involves many steps and these steps represent the basic tools I learned while writing my first paper. Although these were not reflections I made about my paper, but more of the challenges I ran into while writing this paper. For example, I found a challenge in balancing the actual story and the actual analysis. I also ran into the challenge of how to make the timing of the story comprehendible.

Writing my first reflection was perhaps one of the most crucial moments in my learning about college level writing. This process could relate to pulling the bobbin thread with the main thread. This process of reflecting on my writing was the last step that completed introduction to writing at a college level. I was introduced to the task of identifying my own mistakes and putting all of this on paper. “My main issue was very vivid in my writing was the lack of organization and clarity.” (Unit 1 Reflection) This process was the basic step to learning more about metacommunication.

In my first reflection I was able to identify all the mistakes I made. One of the big issues with my writing was that I was unable to show my identity through my past, and therefore I was unable to execute the assignment properly. Additionally I was unable to clarify the sequence of events in my writing. I am not the only one that experienced this issue, Jessica faced the same problem, “I have a tendency to switch back and forth from past to present.” (Unit 1 Reflection)

I have learned from my reflection that I was unable to speak about how to improve my mistakes as much as I could have, which cause my second paper to not be up to the standard that it had the potential to be. The lack of organization was a mistake I was familiar with in my Unit 1 paper that I was able to improve upon more on Unit 2 paper. In order to avoid making the same mistake I made in Unit 1 paper in connecting the title to the text, I did not write the title for Unit 2 paper. This lead me to being absolutely confused and perhaps I was scared of trying to find a suitable title for my Unit 2 paper.

The next sewing step is to see the outcome of your threading and finally make a couple of stitches on fabric and see if they need any adjusting. This I relate to writing Unit 2 paper. After seeing all the mistakes made in Unit 1 and reflecting on them I tried to improve them and see the final product. This is a process connected to metacommunication, which is learning from what you have learned before and putting that into a new piece and trying to improve on my mistakes. At the same time in Unit 2 I was learning new skills, such as making a claim.

Making a claim is what in high school would be considered a thesis. Although in college thesis is a much more complex and is very crucial in writing, in high school there were ways you could get away from writing a thesis, and in college writing, claim ties the paper together. My claim in Unit 2 paper was a little skeptical and I hesitated to just come out and say it, instead I posed it in a questionable way. “If Anzaldua believes language to be used as identity, then a multilingual individual is identified by the languages exposed to them.” This mistake made my paper weaker and the ideas in the paper were not tied together. If I did not include the ‘if’ and rephrased the claim, I would have been able to write a much stronger paper.

While writing Unit 2 paper we did an activity about forming our claim and using pathos, ethos, and logos to help us write the best paper we could. This perhaps was one of the most helpful activities I have ever done. I developed the meaning of the rhetorical situation and was taught how to apply it to my writing. I believe that my Unit 2 paper would have been much better if I chose to do a rewrite; I would have used the concepts I learned much better and would have been able to find my audience. “I also need to think about my audience, who am I writing to?” this is a question Jessica posed in her Unit 1 reflection, this is also the same question I should have asked myself while writing Unit 2 paper.

As I stated before, the sewing machine is full of dials, and one of them is a dial used to adjust the stitch size. This in writing I would connect to learning how to use pathos, ethos, and logos and how to in the end come out with the best rhetorical situation. For example, Phane88 says in his Unit 2 reflection, “I had a hard time finding a claim to make an argument between the author and me.” This is a writing process that takes time to learn and to adjust to, just like learning which stitch size works for what fabric.

Adjusting the needle location is a parallel to figuring out when to use the tools learned in writing and finding the perfect flow. I also relate this to expanding your vocabulary or using words to manipulate your text. For example, Dan’s approach to Unit 2 paper, “I decided to take a very unique viewpoint on the essay and then twist and turn the evidence from the story in order to fit my conclusion. My central idea for my essay on the writing was that immigrants should live in ghettos with people of the same descent in order to make their transition into a new life as seamless as possible. I do not agree with this viewpoint, which I liked because I had to think about this essay from a different point of view than my own in order to prove the point I had set out to establish.” I believe this is important because Dan shows a perfect example of manipulation of text. Even though he does not believe the point he is making, he making a challenge for him to convince others to believe what he is saying. Dan is learning how to manipulate text and shows how it can take on another form.

The final step in sewing on a sewing machine is learning to use the other stitches and learning how to adjust their stitch size. I relate this to writing different kind of subjects using different tools that were learned before and applying them to this new way. For example, writing Unit 4 paper included very different tools than the ones used before in other papers. Unit 4 paper included two options, I chose ‘I Believe’. Compare to other papers, this was a very short piece of writing but a very concise piece indeed. There was also a different structure and expectations from the piece. For example, the claim was made in the end; the whole essay leaded up to the claim.

Writing is a tool that could be used in many ways to convey ideas in many different ways. After reflecting on what you have reflected before I am able to see more improvements and truly analyze my mistakes in a much more in depth way. This process of metacommunication is what makes writers better writers. By making sense of your mistakes and learning from those mistakes, I am able to write a much more solid piece of writing, like this one.

While even I can write a solid piece of work, I never consider the consequences that my writing can have on my reputation now and in the future. Many students may forget about the consequences that follow writing something controversial even in freshmen writing. There are many times that excerpts are pulled out and used out of context, especially if the student becomes a public figure in the future. Writing is a powerful tool and everyone including myself must learn how to use it properly. Until then, I will learn to improve at making a valid claim and work on my grammar as well as many more improvements that I see in the future for me.