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Final self-evaluation

            When I found about the course, I was really interested in taking it because I have never taken a class dealt with gender issues. I figured the class would be even better because it also incorporated science and technology that I really enjoy studying. I was very curious how those subjects will be coordinated together as well.

For the first part of the class, gender, I was fascinated by all the new materials I was learning. I grew up in a homophobic society where gender diversity was not acknowledged, so I felt that I understood where gender diversity comes from and why it is important to acknowledge it for the first time of my life.

For the second part of the class, information, it was interesting to learn about different types of information and concepts of decoding. Maybe the change from the subject of gender to the subject of information was little abrupt, but I definitely had a great experience thinking of what is information and how people decode it differently. Thinking of the chronological changes in how people perceive information depending on the types of information available to them was also interesting.

For the third part of the class, technology and science, I enjoyed reading Frankenstein and other materials because it had the most direct connection with my personal life as a future scientist/doctor. It presented some interesting aspects of technology and science to think about for me such as responsibility as a scientist or as a doctor. I have thought about those aspects of the jobs, but I never had deeply pondered about them. Now I feel that I would be more professional in my job thanks to the realizations I had inside and outside of the class.

Review of participation in group work

I feel that I was able to participate more effectively in a small group discussion because I get more chance to speak and feel more comfortable. I am a very shy person, but I have tried hard to participate and I am satisfied with the improvement I have been having with my English and participation skills in classes since my freshmen writing seminar. I have tried to provide new and unique perspective during the discussions because I feel that I have come from a unique background and have had lots of different experiences from others. It is little disappointing that I have not participated as much as I would have liked for the large group discussion, but I am satisfied with the participation I had in a small group discussion or the improvement I had. The speed and change in discussion seemed little fast for me. I have experienced this problem in many humanity classes I have taken because English is not my first language and sometimes it takes a long time for me to process and come up with an interesting idea that I would like to share with my classmates. Therefore, I appreciated the opportunities I had with postings and commenting on other students’ postings.

Review of written work

I have tried to regularly post weekly postings without forgetting. I believe that I have successfully posted most of them on time. What I liked about the online posting was that you get to think about the course materials deeply outside of the class. You could also interact with your classmates by leaving comments on their postings. I believe that the quality of my production was reasonably great. I never tried to rush writing the postings, but always have thought about it for couple of days and posted them. I also have put reasonable amount of effort toward all of my web papers in order to make them interesting and valuable. While I was reading the postings and web papers of the classmates, I sometimes realized my thinking process was very different from some of the classmates. I think the difference in thinking process comes from the fact that I was mostly educated by science. By reading other classmate’s postings, I was more exposed to other thinking processes than mine and was able to learn from it.