College 1 Final Reflection

1.) Reflection on Southland and Switch

The two books that played the role in changing my ways of reading and that
are mainly focused on in College 1 are Switch and Southland. Southland is a
fictional story book with Jackie Ishida playing as the main character. Her aunt
found an old will left by Jackies late grandfather and Jackie ventured to the
journey to discover more about her grandfather and his past that would make a
great change to her future. The book Southland is a very good book and I am very
happy to be able to get the opportunity to read this book. This book provides me
with a lot past events that had occurred in LA, one of which is the Watts Riots. I
can relate so many things in this book to my life. One of which is the racial
segregation that happens in the book. I can relate it to the world today. Though
racial segregation has been reduced today, it does still happen. The thought of
being discriminated by others just because of the race makes me feel so sad and
disheartened. Whatever happened in the past was much worse, and I am glad to
say that I feel fortunate to be able to live in the world today where discrimination
among races has been drastically reduced. It sure was troublesome at first when I
had to write RRJs for each three chapters I read in Southland, but now I
understand why RRJs are important. By writing RRJs, we are able to understand
and remember more of the stories and we can learn a lot of new and interesting
words that we may not have known beforehand. There was once when I read the
book faster than my classmates, and I finished the next few RRJs. With this, I
did not have to do RRJs for the next few weeks, and as a result, I forgot about
the story of Southland. However, instead of having to spend so much time reading
the past few chapters again, I just have to look through the previous RRJs to
recall the story line. This incident proved to me that RRJs are very beneficial as
they keep the summarized version of the story. The picture below is my annotation
on the book Southland. I circled the years, so that I know that which incidents at
which period of time the author, Nina, is trying to share. I also circled the
important sentences in this page to see how I can relate it to the other chapters.
For instance, I circled the sentence Curtis started to change. I can use this
sentence and reflect on what had happened to Curtis that made him change, and
from here onwards, I can figure out the next few actions that Curtis will be doing.
These types of annotation may be looking very simple, but it is actually not that
simple if you are to reflect on the sentence and think more about it.


Although the book Switch does not give me the same feeling and excitement as
compared to Southland, the book Switch is also an interesting book. It may not be
a story book, but it has so many important life values and skills that I have learnt
that I can apply to my life. The author describes the changes interestingly and in
order to make those changes, we have to be aware of three things and they are:
The Riders; The Elephants; The Paths. As a first year college students, it is very
important and crucial for me to read this book as there are many things that I can
make use of from the book to allow me to adapt to the US more comfortably. I
learn so many lessons here and one of them is from the Fundamental Attribution
Error, or in simpler words, making a snap judgment of others without knowing about
their situation. This teaches me to be more aware of others situation rather than
judging them immediately. After reading this book too, I can learn more in reading
my books. For instance, I highlighted important and interesting quotes that caught
my eyes. This method of reading makes it easier for me to read, understand and
find the important things in the book. To me, the DEJs are not always as
beneficial as the RRJs because DEJs only required me to pick up interesting
quotes. Some quotes I chose could be used as the summary of the chapter as the
chapter focused just on that quote and elaborated more on it. In this case, it is
more beneficial than RRJs as it can tell me more about the chapter in an instant.
However, there are some quotes that I picked that I felt that it had the
connections with me. If I were to choose these quotes, the DEJs could not tell me
what the chapter is talking about.

2.) Successes and Failures Reflection
This semester is indeed a hard and challenging semester for me as it is my
first semester. I did not know much about the US system of education, so I took
15 units and I am getting involved in club activities. Of course, as my first
semester, I had many failures and successes. One of my failures is my Chinese 10
exam. I forgot that I had an exam, so I did not prepare for the exam. As a result,
I had gotten a C for that exam and my overall grade was pulled down all the way to
B. With this mistake, I learn that I should use a planner to remind myself about all
of my activities. I have been trying to use planner and so far, it is good. Here is
the picture for my exam.

On the other hand, I have my successes too. One of them is my English test
which I had gotten an A for. I was preparing all night for this test because I was
so eager to get a distinction. Though I had to suffer a lot and spent a lot of time
to create a good outline and research, those hard work was paid off. I feel so
proud upon receiving back my test as I seldom get an A for my tests. Below is the
picture of my test.

As mentioned above, I used planners now to note down my homework and
activities that I have. I feel that this is a very useful way in ensuring success
especially to forgetful people like me. Also, as the author of the book Southland
has said, The key to success is perseverance. I feel that it is indeed very true.
As a student, I have to endure and persevere many of the obstacles and boulders
that are blocking my path to success. With this perseverance, there will be
solution after time. Of course, you will also need true friends around you who will
always support you and get your back for you. These friends are indeed rare to
find, but once you have found them, treasure them and treat them more than a
diamond. My planner may not be that beautiful or appealing to the eyes, but here
is my planner.


3.) Letter to Future College 1 Students
Hi fellow new students, I am Rheza and I am a new student in PCC who has
been through whatever you guys are currently or will shortly be going through. As
a student who has completed the first semester of PCC, I would like to give you
guys some tips. First of all, welcome to college. People always say that college is
much more fun as compared to high schools or whatsoever, but that is not true.
College is more of a challenge.
To those who love challenge, this is your place. To those who do not love
challenge, this is still your place, but you will need more help. The first problem
you will face is to manage your time properly to get a healthy lifestyle, good grades
and bonds with friends. It may sound easy, but as easy as it sounds, this is the
thing that you will face throughout the semester.
There will a point in time where you will stumble and fall; however, you just
need to seek for helps or you can try to get back up on your feet by yourself. But
of course, it will be easier to seek help. As this is your first semester, I
recommend not taking part-time jobs because you have to try the first semester,
and see for yourself if you could handle everything if you were to work. But let me
tell you something. Everything may sound creepy and all, but you will get a feeling
that you can hardly get after surviving this semester properly. It is the sense of
achievement. You will feel this because you will be impressed that you can do more
than what you think you could.
The first tip will be to manage your time properly as I have mentioned
above. The second tip is to ask for help when you need to. Now you may feel that
you will not be needing any help, but trust me, you will face this too no matter how
strong you think you are. And the last tip will be perseverance. Remember,
perseverance is the key to success. There will be some moment when you feel that
you want to give up. However, all you have to do is to persevere and get through it.
If you choose to give up halfway, all of the things you do will be wasted. Always
think of the reason why did you first choose to do this certain thing.
On a final note, whatever path or major you are in, you have to put your
passion in it. It is never possible to achieve something if you are working half-
heartedly. Not to mention, it is okay to fail because we learn something new when
we fail. Through failures, come knowledge. Remember, It took practice and it
took persistence.
All the best!
Rheza A. Budiono
4.) College Reading Reflection
I was never a fan of reading. I was not born to love reading at all. I tried to
stay away from books and I had always complained about readings. What changed
me was college 1 and my ESL class. Not to mention, the will to want to do well
because my parents are working hard to pay for my tuition. In college 1, I had this
thing called the RRJs, which is something that I have to do after reading 3
chapters of a story book. RRJs consists of summary, reflections, questions making
and vocabs. Not only that, I have to ensure that I understand everything that I
read, so I annotated my book to make it easier for me to find the key points of the
books. Books are no longer a waste of time, and I have come upon to love reading.
Books are not the trashes anymore, but in fact, they are my close friends. They
are no longer a compilation of words to me now, but instead, they are the source of
information and knowledge. Through reading, I learn to understand others more
and I learn to feel differently in different kind of situations.

Through writing down all the main points and summary of each chapters, I
am able to understand the story more and the story line becomes permanent in
your mind. This is better than having to reread the chapters to get what they are
trying to tell you. This is an example of my RRJs.

The picture above is another artifact for my ESL class. I do not only do
annotating just for books, but also for articles. I found that annotation is a very
important way in understanding the passage further. In college 1, you will learn
how to think more about the passage, if and only if, you pay attention in class on
how the professors ask the questions to the students. In my college 1 class,
Professor Ingle always asked the class questions that I had never ever thought
about. This astonished me, so I tried to learn it slowly by annotating the articles
first.
In my ESL class, I also have another
story book that I have to read. The book is
called Outliers, as shown on the left. I was
at the advantage, because my ESL professor
asked the class to start reading the book
only after the spring break. I have learnt a
lot of important lessons and tips from college
1 on how to read and understand books easier
for the first half of the semester. Thus,
this leaves me at the advantage position. By
doing the RRJs, I also learn methods on
focusing more on my reading. As mentioned above, it was to keep my phone away
from me. As a teenager who has just started to enjoy reading, I had difficulties in
liking and understanding the books. I will have to find ways to counter those
problems, and through experience, I learn more lessons. This is also another
important lesson that College 1 class will teach to make students enjoy reading
more. Because of the advantage position I had, I had no problem reading the book
Outliers as compared to my first time reading Southland and Switch.